My Psychological Crime Thriller SNAFU
by he who watches the world burn
Summary: Explore the relationship between Hikigaya Hachiman, a talented young criminal profiler, who is haunted by his ability to empathize with serial killers and shunned by most people for his rotten eyes and his psychiatrist, Dr. Yukino Yukinoshita, who is secretly a cannibalistic serial killer trying to win Hachiman's heart...literally.
1. Chapter 0

My Psychological Crime Thriller SNAFU.

Chapter 0

* * *

"Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as something akin to falling in love."

-Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal, Season 3 Episode 4

She slumbered peacefully when I entered her jail cell. I wanted to catch her as she slept, it would make things easier.

And a part of me still enjoyed seeing her asleep. She heard me enter and started waking up, stretching like a cat fresh from a nap.

Her mannerisms always were feline.

That's why we contradict each other so fittingly.

I would describe myself as an animal, I'd most definitely be a dog. Man's Best Friend is loyal and empathic, as well as the animal most used by military and law enforcement for their usefulness. Just like me, except for the _best friend_ part but I am the go-to agent when law enforcement agencies are out of their depths. And as a criminal profiler, I pride myself in being a good judge of character just like dogs.

By contrast she was a cat; a creature that prides its elegance and holds its refinement so dear. Even by the way she moved spoke cat-like. How she stretches and takes the lightest step that doesn't echo like mine, how she pesters you for attention until you finally submit to her needs, how she can sleep practically anywhere when it gets too hot or when she becomes violent if you wake her up from her beauty sleep.

I've actually never liked cats. They're selfish and mean spirited, exactly how I'd thought about her once. After sometime I grew to enjoy their company, and before long, I felt happiness whenever I was around a cat.

A happiness that became a trauma after seeing what she was like out of her person-suit.

She looks at me with her superior blue eyes and does a few more unnecessary stretches, teasing me with how her prisoner shirt rides up, showing me a hint of her flat stomach's perfect pale skin. I remember it vividly, almost as much as the crime scene photos of her victims scarred permanently into my brain.

"Hello Hachiman." She greets, so elegantly, so politely that it makes the pits of my stomach convulse and raise its acidity to the point that my chest feels like it's being stabbed.

"Hello, Dr. Yukinoshita." I can't call her anything else. To me that's how I should always call her. Nothing less out of respect to the others of her profession, and nothing more after out of the horrors of what she did.

An overexaggerated pout was the only warning I got. It's fake. A simple means to make a jab at the professional barrier I'm putting up.

I know that's what she's doing.

Because I know when she reacts, I know when an emotion is genuine to her, I know what she'll do next.

I know…

…because it's my job to know how a serial killer thinks.

And I know Dr. Yukinoshita better than most because I'm the one who caught her.

"Techically, it's still Hikigaya until the divorce is finalized…"

And before that…married to her.

* * *

 **AN: Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected.**

 **I'll be honest. This came as result from binge-watching the show Hannibal and thinking how much Hachiman reminds me of the character of Will Graham. I'll be honest, just put a few years on a Hachiman, add a pair of glasses and a five o'clock shadow and you get an anime version of S1 Will Graham.**

 **I plan to write a few chapters but I need to get this out of the way first as an important marker since Hannibal came before the story Red Dragon. And this scene was needed to establish the future, something Hannibal didn't need to do.**


	2. Chapter 1

My Psychological Crime Thriller SNAFU

Chapter 1

Hikigaya Hachiman's MC power isn't as great as expected.

The Psychological Thriller Gods must've been high on meth when they decided to play matchmaker with a profiler and a serial killer. Our terrible lives became their horrific attempt at making a Romantic-Comedy that had their sick, twisted, depraved, humor.

This is our story, our written tragedy. My unholy comedy; the hell that has become my life.

* * *

I was a homicide detective first before anything else.

I studied outside of Japan to learn what Japanese universities couldn't teach me.

I even graduated from the premier law enforcement academy, the FBI Academy in Quantico, excelling at every involving Criminal Psychology and Profiling but failing almost every marksmanship test.

I got back to my island nation and wanted to do only one thing.

Solve murders.

And some had too.

Homicides are rare in Japan, that's what make them so gruesome.

To start, Japan hardly has any gun owners, and unlike most countries poverty and desperation aren't the leading cause of murder.

Which means most deaths involve melee weapons, small innocent things like kitchen knives become murder weapons. And the killer wanted more than just money as the reason for committing murder.

I've seen the insides of a home defiled more times that I'd care to admit. This one was unique, as police found that both husband and wife shot dead in a residential neighborhood.

It was graphic, bloody, and there were no witnesses.

They called me in.

* * *

Red and blue lights of sirens flash in my face on the haunted face of Hikigaya Hachiman.

He takes it all in, the location of the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Izumi, the blood splatter on the walls, the broken door, and most importantly…

…the security system on the wall next to the body of Mrs. Izumi, the same one covered in her blood.

Hachiman closes his eyes and begins.

* * *

I kick open the door. The noise draws in Mr. Izumi from the 2nd floor. As he walks down the stairs I shoot at him expertly through the neck. He dies the moment the bullet pierces through his spinal cord, he tumbles down the remaining steps, attracting Mrs. Izumi. "This is my design."

I point my handgun's sights at her. I pull the trigger hitting her in the abdomen, my shot pierces her spinal column, leaving her immobile but very much alive.

"This is my design."

Now she's fully bleeding out to death, but I won't let her die. For she is at my mercy, and I will savor her last moments and subject her to every torture I now envisioned for her.

"This is my design."

She crawls, away from me. She knows who I am. This is personal to us both. Her arm reaches for a panic button on the wall with it, she can call for help. I…let her. For I've already dismantled it. Dismantled her only hope.

Mrs. Izumi frantically pushes the buttons of the wall mounted security system but to no avail. I savor the hope draining out of her as she looks at me in horror. I lightly move her hand out of the way, I'm in no rush. Help won't come. Not in time, at least.

"This is my design."

* * *

Opening his eyes in realization, to his surprise, Hachiman finds himself where the killer had been standing; near the chalk outline on Mrs. Izumi's corpse. With a mind still heavy, he tells a police officer observing.

"Get the police records of the security system. The killer bypassed the security through the telephone poles."

Half an hour later, a technician discovered that the security systems were hacked via the telephone poles.

* * *

The culprit's fingerprints were lifted off the telephone pole. I solved the case.

I thought I'd solve more, but my time as a detective was cut short with the results from my psychological-evaluation saying I was too unstable to be allowed to work in high-profile cases, and an asocial monster of logic that can't work well with others.

Also, I made a habit of not carrying my firearm.

I hate guns. Not because I'm one of those "I hate guns because guns kill" type of idiot, and I'm certainly not a "Guns are for cowards" sword-wielding protagonists.

It's just that without a gun, it's easier for me to do my job. A job that, if I can do well enough, won't require the need for guns.

The higher-ups –may they stub their toes on coffee tables every morning- didn't think so and used it a further reason to fire me.

I was forced to resign from active duty.

With nowhere else to go I went to teaching.

Now I'm a university professor. Apparently, my training in the US in Criminal Profiling made me one of the only Japanese citizens that could teach an entire class on it.

The demand for Criminal Profilers were never that high in a country like Japan. But with the public wanting reforms in the Law Enforcement System, there would be a rise in the demand for courses involving Criminal Justice, including my field Forensic Psychology.

Many Japanese universities would meet this demand before they needed them.

Chiba University was one of them.

It wasn't so bad, better than being unemployed. Honestly it had some benefits. I even enjoyed being called _Professor Hikigaya_. Made me sound expensive and cultured.

I finish the slide show presentation of the Izumi Double Homicide Case. My students listen closely to what I say with morbid fascination attributed to most people who enter this line of study. After a graphic presentation like that, I'm sure I have their total attention.

"As a criminal profiler, you don't just have to know how crimes are done. You need to understand _why_ it was done. Because as I'm sure you've learned in your Criminal Investigation class "The best way to know who committed the murder, is to figure out why." What was the reason? What was going on in the murder's mind. If you know what's inside his head, you know what's wrong with it. You'll see the profile. You can tell which screws are loose. You'll see the criminal. And eventually, you'll know him better than he knows himself." That's the core of my profiling methods, a secret art I'm more than willing to divulge for the sake of a more effective criminal profiler.

"By knowing the criminal, you can sort out the likely suspects from the ones who don't fit and know what can draw him out. Like the old saying "finding a needle in a haystack", well it gets easier when you remove the hay, and bring out a magnet."

I see some of them write down notes, one student of mine checks his watch. And smiles. Has it been an hour already? I need to wrap things up.

"This is an assignment for all you."

I point at them.

"You want to kill Mrs. Izumi. Tell me how."

Some students look confused, a few raise their hands. I quickly tell them to put their hands down. This isn't going to be an oral report.

"I want you all to write me a detailed essay on how you'd have killed Mrs. Izumi. Make it graphic and mostly importantly, I want to know how you felt."

At the word essay, a few spirits seem broken, being a student just a few years ago, I remember my teachers thinking they were our only teachers and kept giving us homework. But I know the best way to motivate people into writing this essay.

"Also, if you don't want to kill Mrs. Izumi, you can change the victim and setting. In short, kill anyone you'd like."

My students lit up at that, only just a little bit. Maybe because this just got easier for them. Everyone has thought about killing someone, it's natural. Whether by their own hands or the hand of God, it's human nature to want to take life. It might even be an almost therapeutic exercise for them to write a narrative about killing someone they didn't like.

"On paper." I reminded, earning me a chorus of laughs.

The last class I gave this assignment to had one student brave enough to write me as their victim, I made him read it out loud and he gave me and the class a detailed story of him strangling me by my lame tie.

I gave him a perfect score for the graphic detail, and making avoid wearing ties for the rest of my life.

As the class was about to end I hear the door open. My teacher instincts told me to call out my late student, call him out for being late fifty-five minutes late. My eyes see someone too old to be a student.

I saw her walking towards me, determined steps in perfect perspective, unshakable even in heels. I put on my glasses to make sure it was her.

She stops at my desk, students already flooding out to give us room. They recognize her too.

They'd be bad students to not know Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka.

"Professor Hikigaya." She says making her presence known, thinking I haven't noticed her yet. Woman, you're wearing a white lab coat, who wouldn't notice you?

"I'm Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka."

I adjust my glasses, strategically putting them on in a way that could block direct eye contact with her.

"We've met," I remind her. But _met_ wouldn't be how I should describe that event three years ago.

She nods. She obviously didn't want to bring that up. I simply saved her the trouble.

"We disagreed on a threatening letter you wrote." She sounded like she didn't want to say it, clearly it was harder for her than for me.

"It was a report on a case." I reminded.

"It had words "The next time I kill someone, it should definitely be a member of the Chiba police" as a side note."

"At the time, the delusional killer was acting like a vigilante, with police officers disrupting his fantasy as hero, he might just think to go the anti-hero route."

Hiratsuka just gives me a stony expression.

"And it wasn't a letter. It was a written psychological analysis of the killer's thoughts during murders." I further explain.

She looks almost pleased at me as she did three years ago, I don't feel the need to reciprocate.

Hiratsuka takes the remote of the projector, and switches it back from one image of Mrs. Izumi to another image.

"And now you're teaching your students how to write threatening letters."

Is this what it's about, my assignments? Though my teaching methods are unorthodox, it's still within the boundaries of the academy's curriculum.

"They're effective at getting them used to the idea of profiling."

I see her smile, she expected me to answer. Usually I just get glared at. Now she's grinning. Oh, this is so much worse. I keep averting my gaze from hers, the last thing I want is to make eye contact with her.

"I understand it's not easy for you to be sociable."

"I'm just talking at them. I'm not listening to them. It's not social."

I look around the room, pretending to check if there are any students still around. Hiratsuka knows there aren't.

I'm looking back and forth, from one exit to another. My glasses' frames keeping her steady gaze from meeting mine.

Until she pulls them up and properly adjusts them back on. Forcing me to look at her in the eye.

I freeze at the contact.

"Where do you fall in the spectrum?" she asks, no doubt figuring out I was _on the spectrum_ from my inability to look at her.

I don't keep eye contact long, I move my rotten eyes around, focusing on other things about her, like her suit's brown buttons, or her lab coat's seams

"I'm somewhere between social phobia and bipolar-disorders, but closer to autistics and Asperger's than I am to narcissists and sociopaths."

I tell her truthfully. It's nothing to be ashamed of. My disorders don't define me. In my opinion psychiatrist today put too many labels on such simple things. Over-diagnosing people who seem to have simple problems and finding only the edges and faults that they can use to shove them into a disorder.

"They also mentioned something about me being the furthers thing from a psychopath. Which is a lie."

If you wore a nice suit and didn't blink during a psych-eval, the psychiatrist would instantly think you were a psychopath. It's that easy for them to assume that charm and manipulation instantly equals psychopathic behavior.

"But you can empathize with narcissists and sociopaths, right?"

"I can empathize with anyone. It's less to do with a personality disorder and more to do with an over active imagination." That was the best way to describe what I have that didn't make me sound like a lunatic or a psychic. Imagination; I can imagine what it's like to be a killer up to the tinniest detail; from the sweetest feeling to where the sweat would pile up. It was almost like playing a VR game with all your sense hooked up, playing the character of the killer, doing nothing but riding the scenes of murder like a cutscene.

She smiles again, and leans in, only a millimeter away from invading my personal space. Woman have some decency!

"Can I borrow your imagination?"

Oh, so that's what's going on, the "I'm acting like a friend because I want something from you." routine. It's so cliché that it still works.

The only reason why anyone still talks to me is they want me to look into a case they can't solve on their own.

How pathetic. It's the Law Enforcement Equivalent of calling someone your friend so you'd pay for their lunch.

Disgusting.

Society, you have once again lost points. Bringing your total score to a whopping negative seven billion. May you all die.

"No."

"So fast!"

I walked out of the lecture room as fast as I could. Pushing my glasses up in between steps, parting groups of idly chatting students as I try to get away from Hiratsuka.

"Wait, Hikigaya!"

I stopped. I don't know why but I just did. I waited, wanting to know what Hiratsuka could say to convince me to help her.

Students glance our way. I catch a few whispering among themselves of the scene happening. This is not what it looks like kids, please don't…

"Eight girls, eight innocent high school girls. Taken from eight different campus around the Chiba prefecture."

"What's in it for me?" I say looking down at her.

I was barely even able to blink before a fist comes into my vision.

But not into my face.

"You shouldn't ask a woman that when you look at her with that kind of look in your eyes." She warns.

"…Understood." I gently adjust my glasses back to my face, they must've moved when I turned to face her.

She saw my eyes.

My rotten-eyes again, it's always my eyes. I ruined my eyesight years ago with night time reading to be able to hide my rotten pupils with a pair of glasses. Sadly, it only works half the time. And when the glasses fail, it looks like I'm intentionally shooting death-glares instead of my eyes just being at their default state.

"Sorry." I hear her say.

"Don't be."

I can tell from her expression that she knows I'm not used to hearing people apologize to me.

"I thought there were seven." I say in a way to change the subject. As far as I know, seven girls were kidnapped.

"There were."

* * *

After a quick drive to the Chiba Prefectural Police Headquarters, Hiratsuka takes me through swarms of investigators to where the investigation was taking place, I look out of place with my plaid button-ups compared to the black suit and ties of investigators and agents. A few police officers are here, so I'm not the only one not dressed as a member of WORLD ORDER.

I feel their eyes on me, only a few seem to know who I am, the rest just seem curious as to why someone who obviously isn't an agent is in here.

I walk a little faster, catching up with Hiratsuka.

"When did you tag the eight?" I asked, hoping that talking to their boss might make them think I'm not just a civilian trespassing.

"About three minutes before I walked into your lecture hall."

"You're calling them "abductions" because you have no bodies?"

"We have nothing. No bodies. No parts of bodies. Nothing that comes out of a body. We have lonely swabs in used evidence kits."

The answer was obvious. "Then those girls weren't taken from where you think they were taken."

"Where were they taken from?" Hiratsuka asks as if she fully believed I knew, she's in for a disappointment.

"I don't know." I'm not a psychic, I can't see the future. "Someplace else."

Hiratsuka takes me to their planning room, it's crawling with investigators and some police officers, all waiting for her but from the looks on their faces, they weren't expecting me.

I see a map in the middle of the board.

I know that area of land anywhere, it's the Chiba prefecture. Seven thumbtacks representing the seven girls dotting the map.

I see faces of girls around the map, the dots connected to a photograph with a line. A very organized visualization of who got taken where.

An agent gives Hiratsuka a file, I focus on listening to the briefing she's about to give me, the kind of information the media doesn't get to have.

The kind I wasn't allowed to have until I signed to this case.

"These girls were abducted on a Friday night so that the girls' parents would think they were out late or staying with a friend." I hear some frustration in Hiratsuka's voice, it's the careful ones that make the worst.

The abductor doesn't want to get caught, so he has the capacity to know right and wrong. He's also careful judging from the lack of evidence found in the scenes, a sign of psychopathy. He's patient as well, not impulsive like many psychopaths.

We're dealing with a psychopathic abductor, or at least it's another piece I can add to the abductor's profile.

Hiratsuka tacks an eight tack on the map, she hands me a photograph of teenage girl in a high school uniform. On top of it was a name written in red marker.

"Number eight?" If this wasn't so serious, I would think that the Psychological Thriller Gods were making a pun out of my first name.

"Her name's Kayo Takahashi. Sixteen years old, goes to Subo High School. Her parents were away on a trip for the weekend, she was supposed to stay home and watch the cat. Her parents came home and didn't find any trace of her. She never made it home."

It was at this moment that I felt it necessary to say what no one in the room had the guts to say, but knew all along what it meant when there was an eight victim in a kidnapping case.

"Girls one to seven are dead." I wave the picture of the Ms. Takahashi to their unimaginative faces. "He's got himself a new one, why keep the rejects."

It wasn't me who said that. It was the abductor because that's what went through his mind, I say it only to tell them the truth they keep denying and treat this not as a rescue kidnapping but a murder.

And it's also for my sake, to ease my way into understanding the monster capable of doing these things.

At my statement, many agents and police officers glare at me, some even look nauseous of the idea.

If it was awful for them to hear, it was even harder for me to say. Because I feel sick just even trying to make sense of what this sick bastard must be thinking of.

To give Hiratsuka credit she doesn't look at me completely with disgust. It almost looked like she was agreeing, and thankful that someone finally said.

Or more accurately, that she didn't have to say it.

"Then let's focus on finding Kayo."

I nod in agreement.

I take in the hopeful looks on the faces of these seven girls. Every single one of them looks like they would instantly reject high school aged me if I had confessed to either of them.

"He's got a type." Very few men do. And when a guy does, it's not as specific as black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and flat chest.

It's disturbing to think that every girl with those features could be the next victim.

"Same hair, same eye color, Roughly the same age, same height, same weight."

 _Don't forget cup size, most criminal profiles always forget the importance of cup size._

"What is it about these girls?" Hiratsuka asked me, at this point she's probably tried several theories already, no doubt starting with sexual implications.

We live in Japan after all, it was fair to speculate.

But this…this feels more than just a fetish taken too far.

"It's not about these girls. It's about one of them." I stick the photo of Kayo Takahashi on the board, lining it up to the 8th tack on the map.

"Or none of them. And it's about a special girl who hasn't been taken yet." I don't put emphasis on the word yet, the girl might be Kayo Takahashi.

Or is it a girl who can't be taken? No, I shouldn't guess. Guessing would make my brain lean to that idea and ignore all other possibilities.

Guessing is the worst enemy for characters in Crime genre after all, reserved for the incompetent cop who goes with his gut at every episode. I'll hypothesize using the evidence. That's how Holmes does it, that's how Conan Edogawa does it, and that's how I'll do it.

And most importantly, that's _not_ how most police officers in Japan do it, they just pin the blame on the most suspicious person and extract confessions out of them under duress. Source: Me and several other credible media sources.

"So is he warming up for this special girl or reliving whatever it is the he did to her?" she asks, staring at the girls faces.

"She wouldn't be the first one taken or the last. He would hide how special she is. I know I would. Wouldn't you?" I take my bag and leave.

I've done enough, I've had my fill of madness. Hiratsuka can figure the rest out.

"I want you to get closer to this." Was the last thing I wanted to hear Hiratsuka say.

"You have dozens of more qualified people with PhDs and are actually allowed to do field work who do the exact same thing I do."

"That's not really true, is it? You have a specific way of thinking."

I've grown tired of this. "Has there been a lot of discussion about the specific way I think?"

My entire adult life has been a series of people wanting to look into my head and see what makes me different for academic purposes.

"You can make jumps you can't explain."

"The evidence explains it."

I'm not psychic, or a super genius. Anyone can do what I can with enough practice and the right education.

"Then help me find some." Hiratsuka asked in a way that you'd have to be the coldest person in the world to not accept.

I don't have a choice in this. I never did.

She knows exactly what I want, and that's to save Kayo Takahashi.

To save another girl from sharing the same fate as the other seven.

That's what I studied and trained for; to help people.

To help keep them safe from the monsters that look like people.

I might not like what I have, but the Crime Drama Gods gave me a neat enough party trick to be of some good use.

Because I'm not a selfless guy.

It's just my selfish desire to make sure no one should loses a loved one…

… to some psychopath with a fetish.

"That would require me to be social."

* * *

The Takahashi household was a quaint little home, so peaceful and loving, that I felt out of place defiling it with my rotten presence.

I can't even retain contact with Kayo Takahashi's parents; Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi looked tired, Mrs. Takahashi even looks resigned, looking like she just aged an entire decade in the last forty-eight hours. But what kind of mother wouldn't be a mess when her daughter was taken?

My childhood has an answer to that.

"She could have just run away, you know. Took a train. She never did like studying. The pressure of school was hard on her, and who knows…she might have…she might have." Mr. Takahashi speaks with some hope that his daughter might still be alive, assuring himself and his wife who was sitting beside him on the kitchen table.

Hiratsuka sat opposite to the couple, talking them in their dining room, I was on my feet surveying the place.

"She looks like the other girls?" asked Mrs. Takahashi.

"She fits the profile." Hiratsuka didn't want to divulge the profile exactly, as a case that is on-going it would be illegal to do so, but I know that in her mind, telling parents the reason why their daughter was taken was because of some genetic combination of Mr. Takahashi's blue eyes, and Mrs. Takahashi's long black hair, led to making their daughter an appealing target for an abductor would just crush them.

Make them blame themselves and hate their own DNA.

It was a feeling I got from Hiratsuka.

A feeling we both share.

"Could Kayo still be alive?" she asked, hope seeping through her voice.

"We simply have no way of knowing." Hiratsuka answers truthfully.

I feel like an intruder at the same time the bringer of bad news ordered to find clues to confirm their daughter was dead.

I search around, looking for any indication of forced entry, or possible locations for entry; I find cat hair instead.

"How's the cat?"

I admit, now that I hear it out loud, that may have sounded like it came out of nowhere. I'll probably lose an hour of sleep marring over this tonight. Replaying this awkward memory over and over again.

"Excuse me?"

"You said you weren't here all weekend, and Kayo was supposed to look after the cat. It didn't eat all weekend, must've been hungry when you came home."

"The cat's fine."

"I didn't even notice."

Were the answers I needed to hear.

Someone better call HQ, the tack on the map is wrong, she wasn't taken around her school.

I quickly move to Hiratsuka's ear. "She was taken here. She left school, came home, feed the cat. He took her here." Those were the sequence of events, now we finally have a definitive location of an abduction.

Hiratsuka calls someone. "I need teams, the Takashi House has just become a crime scene. Get Isshiki, Nishiyama, and Nijima." Her personal best by the sound of things.

The Takashi family look in horror, their home now a scene of a crime, their haven from the dangers of the outside world, the place their little girl grew up in now forever defiled by a someone taking their daughter.

I know what they must be going through. Literally. I feel it from just looking at them. It's not a good feeling, suddenly nothing is safe and nothing makes sense.

But I can't linger on that feeling, I can't put myself in their shoes. Not now. Not when I still need to look for their daughter.

"Can I see her room?" I ask permission first, they've had enough people coming in and out of their house. It was the polite thing to do.

"The police were there all morning."

The police were only looking for their daughter or clues of her running away, not evidence of an abduction.

I put on my surgical gloves as Mr. Takahashi leads me to his daughter's room. We make our way up the stairs, and I see the cat.

The odd black and brown fur-ball claws at the door of the last room on the left.

The same door Mr. Takahashi was leading me to.

I prepare for the worst.

The cat ignores Mr. Takahashi, who then reaches for the door knob.

"Don't" I say, stopping his hand from making contact the stainless-steel door knob.

"I'll get it." His worried look forces me to explain. "It's better if you let me do the touching." I make a gesture with my gloved hands and he understands.

"Would you put your hands in your pockets and avoid touching anything, please." He looks hesitant at the order.

I glance down at the feline; the fur ball was making a mess with its claws.

"If it makes you feel better you can hold the cat." I think as a good excuse. "Keep it from making a mess of any evidence."

He picks up the cat as instructed. Seeing that we were both ready, I open the door.

I made a mistake, I wasn't ready. Not for what was on the other side.

I noticed the opened window first, it screamed at me to investigate further. I flick the lights open and I see her.

Kayo Takahashi.

She lay coffin style on the bed, dressed in pajamas as if she had just gone to sleep.

But I can see her greyed skin, the puncture wounds that seep blood doting her light blue pajamas with red specks, and her unmoving chest.

She's dead.

Sadly, Mr. Takahashi isn't as observant as I am. He moves forward. Blinded by hope that his little girl was back home and alive.

"Kayo?"

I grab him by his shoulders before he could contaminate the crime scene.

"I need you to leave the room."

"No- she's…she's…"

My overactive imagination- my empathy leaks through. I feel his emotions and vividly as if it was my own daughter lying there.

Worried. Hopeful. Concern. But I also feel the impending torture of the loss approaching.

They say that having children is like was walking with your heart out of your chest.

Because of Mr. Takahashi I know exactly how that feels like, the feeling of constant, involuntary worry that consumes a father of a young girl.

Mr. Takahashi notices now, that Kayo wasn't just sleeping, with his daughter's death sinking in, he drops the cat.

And now I feel the agony of having your heart ripped out of you.

For a split second, I feel the torture like a punch to my heart.

I was lucky, I put up the walls the kept my imagination at bay, the pain only lasted for a split second in real-time.

For Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi however, that pain would never stop.

The cat, now free, scurries off to Kayo's body, contaminating her face with its fur and saliva.

This is why I hate cats.

* * *

The team arrives, the Takahashi house is once again full of police, men in white button ups and blue vests are forming a perimeter, some looking for evidence, a few officers were with the Takahashi couple, consoling them enough so they were fit for asking questions.

My guess is they want a time frame, the moments the killer could have a put Kayo back in her bedroom.

Finding out when was their job.

Finding out why would be mine.

"You're all hooked up." Hiratsuka tells me, the small recording device on my shirt feels heavier than it should. It bothers me that I need to be recorded as per regulations.

"If you want to talk you talk." She tells me in an assuring "Just do what's natural kind of way."

This isn't natural.

This isn't normal.

Or sane.

Nothing is sane about standing in a room of a deceased girl trying to find her killer by empathizing the monster's sick twisted mind.

But it's my job.

I grit my teeth for a second then stop, gritting your teeth is bad for you, just ask your dentist.

I give Hiratsuka a small nod.

She leaves the room. Nothing else said.

I needed to hear the door close first before I could begin, it shuts softer than I wanted it to, a slam would have been better.

I close my eyes, I take a breath, I keep in to account the evidence I've discovered; the bed's frame slightly ajar, the bruises on Kayo's body, the pajama's she's in, the wounds on her, and most importantly...

...the wide open window.

* * *

The same window I find myself looking through.

Staring at Kayo Takahashi's sleeping form.

She's alive.

She's sleeping peacefully.

She has no idea what's going to happen to her.

She's mine.

I look down on her, I'm at her side, she's unaware of the danger that's literally standing in front of her.

 _All evidence points that the puncture wounds weren't her cause of death, no signs of a struggle either, she was asleep when he took her so that only means…_

I raise my foot and slam it down on her in a jump, bearing all my weight on her, I feel her ribs crack.

Kayo startles out of sleep, and tries to scream but my hands are around her throat.

I choke the life out of her.

All my weight, I push down on her form.

I see her face is in pure terror, her face swells against the pressure, tears flow down her face the whites in her eyes wrinkle and the veins burst.

The bed snaps, and Kayo dies.

"This… Is…My…-"

* * *

"You're Hikigaya Hachiman, aren't you?"

I'm suddenly back to where I was standing to see another person in the room with me. She's a police officer, one of Hiratsuka's best, or else she wouldn't be in here and wearing plain-clothes.

"You're not supposed to be here."

I feel like I'm sixteen and my parents caught me masturbating. Caught doing something disgusting and personal.

"You're the professor who graduated from the FBI academy in the US." She knows who I am, knows all about me apparently. She sounds like a fan, but I just want her to leave so I can catch my breath.

"I found antler velvet in two of the wounds." She gestures to the body with a small forensic bottle containing evidence.

With her eyes no longer trying to connect with mine I look at her, she's short, shorter than me by a foot, with brown hair that's shoulder length.

She looks like the girl who you talk to for one minute and you suddenly fantasize about dating, marrying and spending your lives together.

She looks to be my age, so it's understandable.

"You're, uh, not a real detective?"

Her cute looks finally break their hold on me. "A consultant detective is my official designation now. Less Sherlock Holmes, more Harry Dresden." Always did prefer the consulting wizard over the pompous sociopath.

"Who?"

She's _definitely_ a woman my age. "Look it up." I tell her, hoping to cure at least one Japanese female of pop-culture deficiency.

"Are you hitting on me?"

…No! Woman, we are in a crime scene! And what part of me calling you unpop-cultured is me hitting on you?!

She looks away as if scandalized by me looking at her. "I'm sorry Professor but I'm not the kind of woman who does these sorts of things during an ongoing investigation…"

Neither am I!

"Isshiki!"

Hiratsuka comes rushing through the door, looking ready to scold her some more. "You know you're not supposed to be in here."

And just like that, Isshiki or something-whatever-her-name-is changes her attitude instantly, replacing her sly smile to a professional look.

"I found antler velvet in two of the wounds, like she was gored. I was looking for velvet in the other wounds but I was interrupted."

She explains like a competent police officer, instead of the schoolgirl persona I just got hit with.

This woman's a fox, not in the seductive secretive way that most women aren't, but the two-faced mischievous kind that eats your food and runs away.

I stare at her longer than I should.

Before more people come into the room.

A man who looks like he's dressed for an action cop movie with his leather jacket and neatly trimmed beard walks in the room. He's Nijima or Nishiyama, but the older man still at the door looks more like a Nishiyama.

Nijima's now standing next to me, leather jacket looking even cooler next to my field jacket in comparison. He starts talking, I've never been ignored at such a close distance before.

"Deer and elk pin their prey not stab them, pins them down using all their weight to suffocate them. That's how they'd kill a predator." He shares, enforcing the rule that all detectives should know about seemingly useless bits of trivia.

The room just felt congested, I better just sneak out of here.

"Kayo Takahashi was suffocated to death. Ribs were broken." Hiratsuka begins perceiving it the wrong way, leading the investigation in the wrong direction, piecing together the right information on the wrong way.

I had to stop, I needed to tell her that the killer isn't trying to copy a deer's method of killing or whatever deer-related ideas her and her team may have in this case.

"Antler velvet is actually known to promote healing." I share some trivia, in the hopes of stopping further derailment of productive trains of thought.

"They're rich in nutrients and sometimes used in traditional Japanese medicine."

Almost all horns are known to promote healing in traditional eastern medicine. That's why rhinos went extinct after all.

"He may have put it there on purpose."

The killer was meticulous, antler velvet is not a common thing to find unless he put it on her for a reason.

"You think he wanted to heal her?" Hiratsuka looks skeptical, I don't blame her.

The evidence tells us he killed this girl brutally but cared enough about her to do it quickly and as painless as he could.

"He tried to undo what he did to her, given that he already killed her."

Hiratsuka, looks at the body, and realizes the bed's significance. "He put her back where he found her."

I stare at Kayo Takashi's body and understand one tiny bit about the killer. "Whatever he did to the others, he couldn't do it to her."

He's picky.

Like a child with his dinner.

"Is this the special girl?" Strangely, Hiratsuka sounded hopeful.

As bad as Kayo's death was, I couldn't blame her for wanting this to be the last.

Once again, I'll have to shoot down that hope.

"No, this is just an apology."

He will kill again.

A dull pounding at the bone from the inside of my head makes me pinch the bridge of my nose, too much information. Felt like I was back in college in the middle of Finals Week.

"Does anyone have any aspirin?"

* * *

I take a few shots of aspirin from a drugstore near the station. The throbbing in the spaces between my ears finally becomes bearable enough for me to travel.

An uncomfortable train ride back to Chiba later I finally got in my car.

My Toyota pick-up truck was for off-road comfort. The kind of comfort you get when riding a big car in a city full of family sedans and sports cars.

My pick-up isn't a means to show off my above average manhood. I need a decent off-road vehicle for my rides home, so why not a beefy, vehicle of Japanese comfort and design.

I live pretty far from the big city, almost a two-hour drive in fact. Almost all the way to the mountains.

The housing in the big city is too expensive for my teacher's salary. It's also the only place I can get enough space.

I couldn't survive living in a cramped apartment, the depression alone would kill me, then I'd have nowhere to practice my bow.

I'm an archer, not a pro but a decent shot. I could hit a moving target.

And archers need wide open spaces to shoot arrows without fear of hitting someone that could sue them for attempted murder.

Besides, the long ride isn't so bad. It's actually one of the best things about it.

Ever since I learned how to drive, I've always loved driving in through longs roads. They're so relaxing, almost freeing. Unlike the big cities, not many cars go through save for the usually delivery truck, so there's never any traffic, and it just feels tranquil.

Gives me time to think and monologue.

I see something up a head, the closer I get to it, I recognize what it was.

It's another plus side to living so far away.

"Hello there."

You never know what you might find along the way home.

* * *

"Who knew this case would wound up wounding me up like a jack-in-the-box, a few cranks left and I pop, my nerves as tense as the springs coiled against the lid. This killer's something else, his head's holding a completely new type of Joker inside.

"The air is cold. Nothing new when in this time of year. The freeway was empty, the kind of empty that would leave you paranoid of what's hiding. But you seemed to take it, can't you?"

My passenger grunts.

"I admire that."

 _CRANK_

The aspirin's wearing off, or maybe I've grown resistant. I'll just monologue the pain away.

"The murderer. He was apologizing. But not to Kayo. To the parents. He risked getting caught to put her where her mom and dad would have wanted to find her; safe and sleeping in her bed. He's gotten into their heads better than I could get into his."

 _CRANK_

"Why though?" I rub my temple, careful not to shift my glasses that could impair my vision and cause an accident.

 _CRANK_

"Why would he kill Kayo but try to fix her?"

 _CRANK_

"What makes her different from the other girls?"

 _CRANK_

"More importantly…why am I telling you this?"

My passenger lets out a bark as a response.

I don't know whether that's a Yes or No, or he simply wants more gas station chicken.

"I'll take that as a you wanting more gas station chicken." I give him another piece of deep fried chicken and it seems I was right.

* * *

My tiny house was as isolated as you could get in Chiba.

Used to be a farmer's house. Been living in it for almost a decade now. I don't plant crops though, but I use the fields for other things.

Mostly as an archery range.

The first thing I did when I got home was give the little guy a bath, the poor thing's fur was so dirty that it wasn't until the third washed that I found out its coat was honey-brown and not dark brown.

You should have seen him, trudging alone in the dark, dragging his leash on the streets. A leash, upon closer observation, he must've gnawed off.

I hate people like that. Why would you get a dog if you were just going to keep him leashed on a tree?

No wonder it was so easy for me to bribe him into my car with convenience store food.

The poor guy's been starving.

I toweled him off thoroughly so he wouldn't shake and get me wet. And just to be sure, I blow dry him.

Now if I could just think of a name, to give him. Should have thought of one along the way instead of monologuing.

"Ranpo." After the famed Japanese author who was secretly a fanboy for English literature.

"Everyone. Meet Ranpo." I tell my little pack of stray dogs I've found over the years. I took them all in. Japan has a cruel policy when it came to stray dogs, euthanizing them in gas chambers.

"Ranpo. Meet everyone."

By everyone I meant Ryu, my Kai Ken, a breed of dog that looks like a small husky black bear that just loves to run at me at full speed when I get home.

Inusuke, my old Akita breed, a loyal guard dog breed and demoted couch buddy. I named him after another author but it's a pun.

My tough looking Faito, a Tosa or Japanese Mastiff, a red tank of a dog. Found him after investigating about an illegal dog fighting den. I got him when he was still a puppy that was recently sold there, so he's a big softy.

And of course, my white Japanese spitz I call Aramu, the fluffy snowball just _loves_ attention, always eager to have me around, never lets me sleep past seven; that's why I call her "Alarm" with a Japanese accent.

I introduce them to Rampo like a new member of the family. And I don't have to wait long for a reaction.

Inusuke was the first to greet the newest member of the family, barking happily as the others trailed along.

The eerie silence of my tiny house is replaced by a symphony of barking. Everyone accepting their newest friend.

This is why I love dogs.

Dogs befriend very easily and accept just about anyone. Show them respect and affection and they reward you with undying loyalty.

"Who wants dinner?"

I'll give them something meaty tonight to celebrate.

"Dogs should be rewarded for not being people. I hate people."

* * *

I turn the heater on for my dogs before I go to sleep, they flock around the orange glow. While I head to my bed that's too far away for the heat to reach.

I sleep better cold. Or at least, when I'm under a mountain of blankets.

But tonight, sleep seems to elude me, always there but not yet. I'm at the point in trying to sleep when your brain's being a jerk and starts replaying your most embarrassing moments, cringing you out of sleep.

I close my eyes tight and power through it, staying motionless and focusing on the hypnotic humming of the heater.

It almost works, I feel sleep's slow approach.

I hear a sound.

It wakes me right up.

I look to my side and see Kayo Takahashi's body. Her pale corpse lays beside my bed.

I'm frozen, blood drains from my face.

She's dead, but not the same way I saw her.

I reach out to her. I don't know why but my hand just does.

But Kayo floats, lifted by an invisible force.

I lose sight of her, she disappears, behind blackness.

She's upright, hanging like a doll on a wall, limp and unmoving. I have a feeling, somewhere in my goat something was going to happen.

I just know it. My heart beats frantically in my chest.

Antlers pierce her from behind, like branches growing out of her, drawing her blood and she hangs on them. Blood drips freely from her wounds.

I wake up before I could scream.

I was covered in sweat.

My breath ragged and my throat like sand paper.

I'm sick to the stomach and my head feels like it's been under a hydraulic press.

When I took in the killer's madness to understand him, I didn't get a chance to let it out.

So this is how my melody ends, what happens when there's been enough cranks; the image of Kayo Takahashi's defiled corpse pops out the lid.

* * *

The next day at work instead of going to Hiratsuka like I was supposed to, I hide in the bathroom.

Bathrooms are safe havens for loners, a place to escape when the cafeteria is too crowded or when there's an event taking place and you don't want to be part of it.

I also tend to remember – or more accurately, _retain_ – my old middle school habits.

I keep my eyes closed as I turn off the sink.

Like washing my face more often than necessary. This is the sixth time, and for the sixth time I dry my face with a paper towel.

I'm not ashamed to admit I've been at this all morning, hiding in the sanctuary of the men's room and alternating between sitting in a bathroom stall and washing my face to avoid Hiratsuka.

It got old pretty quickly.

My fingers are wrinkly as prunes and water's been dripping down from my collar to inside my shirt long enough to cause hypothermia.

Eventually, I couldn't stay like this forever.

"What are you doing in here!?"

I turn and stare blankly at Hiratsuka, an unused paper towel still in my hand. Face dripping with water.

"I could say the exact same thing to you. This is the men's room."

Hiratsuka just looks crossed, but tries to stay calm, or tries to look like she's calm. "Let's talk."

"Gandhi always said, you should only talk when you contribute to silence." Or something like that, I was never good at quoting pacifists.

That only sets Hiratsuka off.

"What I want you to contribute to is this case!" her yell echo through the tiled room.

An officer with poor timing, walks in, hearing only the end of Hiratsuka's outburst.

The officer looks between me and Hiratsuka, as though he had just walked in on a couple's quarrel. Cautious but curious

"Use the ladies room!" she yells at the agent, taking her eyes of me for the first time.

He leaves us alone, scared of Hiratsuka.

Poor guy.

Take me with you.

I hear Hiratsuka let out a breath, and when she faces me again she looks calmer, letting her anger out on that officer must've calmed her down.

"Do you trust my judgement, Hikigaya?"

Against my better judgement. "Yes."

"Then trust me when I say we'd have a better chance of catching this guy with you in the lead and not bringing up the rear."

As far as I know, I'm the only lead Hiratsuka has, so she's not letting me go. What's in my head could catch this guy.

A life could be at stake.

I understand her. I really do.

But I'm just as- or even more than- confused as her.

"I don't this kind of psychopath. I've never read about him. He's not shallow. Or insensitive. I'm not even sure he's a psychopath."

"You know something about him; otherwise, you wouldn't have said "This was an apology". What's he apologizing for?"

Well to start, at least I know that much.

"He couldn't honor her." That's what I felt, what her body meant. "He feels guilty because he couldn't honor her. He feels remorse. He feels bad."

"Well feeling bad defeats, the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn't it?"

"YES, it does."

This is where we are, calling him a psychopath would be so much easier. I wanted to shove the image of the killer into a box labelled PYSCHOPATH and be done with this case but he doesn't fit.

Hiratsuka continues to treat me like a break room vending machine that doesn't drop the snack, she has to force it out of me.

"Then what kind of crazy is he!"

Stop yelling at me woman. This isn't something I can do on the spot. Or under duress. And I'm not a hapless idiot you can push into spilling.

"To him, he couldn't show her how much he loves her so he put her corpse back to where he found it." She's not a reject, she's a loss, to him personally. "Whatever crazy that is?" was my best, and only answer.

"You think he loves these girls."

"He loves one of them." I admit, I'll give him that much. "And by association, he has a form of love for the others." It's why they all look alike.

They look like the one girl he loves. His black haired, blue eyed, flat-chested, SPECIAL GIRL.

"There was no semen. No saliva. Kayo Takahashi died a virgin and she stayed that way." Hiratsuka has a different interpretation of love; the sexual kind.

But this killer isn't like that, whatever I felt in Kayo Takahashi's, sexual arousal was not one of them. No euphoric bliss after satisfying a need. No peak of arousal, just guilt.

"Even he has standards." I say blunter than my self-preservation would have liked. "He loves, wouldn't disrespect them. Not like that."

He treats them right. In his own twisted way, he cares about them.

"He doesn't want these girls to suffer. He wants them to die quickly! I…"

I'm defending him. Defending a killer. Why, I'll never know. I just feel the need to tell Hiratsuka.

I calm down, enough to change the tone of my voice back to a respectful one "…He's thinking with mercy."

Hiratsuka notices, realizes something. I watch her carefully, judging her reaction.

"A sensitive psychopath." she finally says. "Risked getting caught so he could tuck Kayo Takahashi back into bed." she says in quiet understanding.

I relieved we weren't yelling anymore, my head can't take anymore loud noises.

"He knows he's going to get caught. He'll take the next girl soon." I don't need to be…well _me_ to know that.

Human nature is self-destructive. And in desperation, they will do the illogical. And Hiratsuka knows it.

"I know I would." I say putting on my glasses.

I'll ignore the look Hiratsuka gives me.

She knows what she signed up for coming to me for help.

* * *

I didn't want to deal with anymore of Hiratsuka's _convincing_ , and neither could I face a classroom full of shiny, bright faces. I haven't been in an examination room for a long time, my eyes never could stand the white walls, white floors and ceilings, and cold metal body lockers and slabs.

The dead bodies you get used to, the eye pain just gets worse.

When I got to the team, Kayo's body was still in the body bag, they zipped her open when I put on my gloves. They offered to give me a lab coat so I could get a closer look, but I declined.

Honestly, I didn't want to be near Kayo's body.

Afraid it might float again and scary me. At least I'm sure this isn't another nightmare.

I'm sure.

Nijima lists down her injures, I listen to them talk but to join.

Too busy suppressing the nightmare that made ice crawl up my spine.

"I checked for prints, couldn't find any. But I got a hand spread off her neck."

From when he strangled her to death.

"Reports say anything about the nails?"

Isshiki asked.

Nijima shakes his head.

"Nothing, her fingernails were smudged when we took scrapings. The scrapings were where she cut her palms with them. She never scratched him." said Nishiyama, he's the doctor in the group from what I can tell. He's older than me, and probably Isshiki and Nijima too.

He's age shows when he furrows his brow, disappointment revealing his matured features.

The whole team looks defeated, this body wasn't the jackpot of clues we wanted.

The was sorry but he wasn't careless.

"This curly piece of metal is all we got."

Metal?

"I found metal clippings on her pajamas." Isshiki explains, then shoots me a flirty smile, tying to seduce me into inferring an inductive reasoning for it.

I might as well.

"We should be looking for plumbers, metalworkers, construction workers, steam fitters, tool workers."

Blue-collar not White. Great, another psychopathic trait to cross out of the list. I might as well burn my psychology books.

"Have that tested, see if it's the kind of metal used only by specific companies. Helps narrow the search."

They take my word for it, somehow. I feel like I'm back teaching in class. But they were all too busy thinking to make a sound.

The room just got quiet, quiet enough for me to try something.

I glance at Kayo's body.

Whether what happened last night was Kayo's ghost or my brain taking a shot at being a horror movie director, it didn't matter. What mattered was my dream showed me something.

Something that I must've caught when I was still at the Takashi house before I was interrupted.

It's a long shot but I'll try it.

I look at Kayo on the slab, force myself to really look, convince myself feel the madness of the killer. Let his evil in me and flood mind.

I try harder, looking within and use what's left of the madness I haven't yet expelled.

The nightmare comes back out of nowhere, it's the same darkness, it's the most vivid memory I've ever had of a dream.

Kayo's dead body floating. Limp. Lifeless. And suddenly, antlers pierce her flesh.

But it goes on.

Further than what I remembered when I woke up. My memory able to remember all the details of the dream, almost unlocking it from my subconscious.

I hear Nijima speaking, continuing their examination. "Her other injuries were post-mortem. So… not gored." That was addressed for Isshiki and her theory.

"She's got lots of piercings that look like they were caused by deer antlers, I didn't say a deer gored her." Isshiki rebukes.

They'd be at this banter forever if I don't say something.

"She was mounted on them." I say suddenly.

That stops they're playful rivalry. Isshiki and Nishiyama glance at me, Nijima was busy looking at Kayo's body, investigating the abdominal wound not caused by the antlers that he seems to have just noticed.

"Like hooks."

Just like in the dream. Kayo was mounted on the antlers, blood pouring down from her body, pooling around her suspended feet.

"She may have been bled."

Bled like a pig in a slaughter house…

My stomach acids rise, I feel my mouth fill with bitter saliva as an idea ricochets around my head hoping to hit a wall of logic that could disprove it.

"Her liver was removed." Nijima opens the wound to show Nishiyama. "See that? He took it out, and then…he put it back in."

Nijima removes the organ for closer inspection.

"Huh?" goes the oldest one of us here.

"Why would he cut it out if he was going to sew it back in again?" asked the confused doctor.

With that, my idea finds no such wall of logic to dismiss it as a morbid thought.

I have the answer.

Every muscle on my face slacks as I say it.

"There's something wrong with the meat."

Nijima looks at Kayo's liver and then back to me, he probably thinks I'm psychic or have x-ray vision.

"She has liver cancer."

I come to a sick realization, one that makes me feel like I'm about to throw up. These girls, he's not imprisoning and raping them, or selling them off to slavery like the police think.

They can't find their bodies because they're may not be any bodies left...

"He's um...He's eating them."

* * *

He shows his love for these girls by eating them, every part of them.

He couldn't honor Kayo because of her cancer.

He couldn't honor her so he put her back.

Too bad.

Human liver is a succulent meat. Like sweet pork.

In a dimly lit dining room, another cannibal doesn't share the same problem as the killer Hachiman was after.

To her, cooking the meat to perfection and presenting it, serving the dish with red wine ,and eating it with classical music was all the honoring the dish needed.

She enjoys her dish of human liver, simply because human meat tastes good.

And she holds no guilt in enjoying it.

She's beautiful, the ideal Japanese beauty, sophisticated and erudite.

Even though she was dining alone, she sat pointedly on the table with perfect table manners.

She gracefully carves up a bite sized piece of human liver, skewering it with her fork before applying a balance of garnishes with her knife.

She takes a bite.

And smiles.

Delicious.

Meet Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino.

* * *

End of Chapter 1

 **AN:**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Oregauiru or Hannibal.**

 **First of all shout-out to a reviewer by the username** **Blakithleo for finding my hidden message in the word count. The first chapter had 666 words, the number of the beast and popularly associated with the devil, referencing Yukinoshita's role in the story.**

 **You know, cuz she's evil.**

 **I can't promise when the next chapter will come out.**

 **The story won't be the same as Hannibal, and definitely not going to follow Oregauiru's story line for obvious reasons. The starts are relatively the same, but this story will differ immensely.**

 **CHARACTERS:**

 **Hikigaya Hachiman: Former Homicide Detective of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, forced to resign due to concerns over his mental health, currently a Professor at Chiba University and Consultant for Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka.**

 **The Batman to Hiratsuka's Commissioner Gordon.**

 **A gifted Criminal Profiler with an extensive knowledge of the Criminal Mind. Friendless and pragmatic, his intellect is rivaled only by his instability. P** **urposely ruined his eyesight to hide his "rotten-fish eyes" with high-grade glasses.**

 **Hiratsuka Shizuka: The Commissioner Gordon to Hachiman's Batman.** **The commissioner of the Chiba Prefectural Police who holds everyone working under her to the same high standards she sets for herself.** **Although she respects the decision to relieve Hachiman from active duty, she still believes he could be the greatest weapon at their disposal to catch the most vicious killers.**

 **Isshiki Iroha: Detective and Forensic Scientist. The youngest member of Hiratsuka's team. Though she acts playful and flirty, she's still every much a police officer that through talent and hard work, got her to the position she's in today.**

 **Nijima Nagisa: A hard-boiled detective, former delinquent turned cop, almost as tough as he tries to look. Prefers to only be called "Nijima". Too smart to be called stupid, and acts too stupid to be called smart. Hiratsuka's most loyal man whom he respects deeply.**

 **Dr. Nishiyama Souma: A doctor who works better with dead patients than living one's, the oldest member of Hiratsuka's team, been doing this job too long as as he never bats an eye to a dead body.**

 **Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino: A world renowned psychiatrist, and a sociopathic serial killer who cooks and eats her victims, a famous figure to the upper-class citizens in Chiba for her astounding intellect and refined pursuits in classical music, opera, and of course...gourmet cuisine.**

 **About ages,** **Hachiman and Yukinoshita's are similar to Hiratsuka's from the source material. Older than 25 but not yet 30. So 29 at most.**

 **Isshiki is the youngest, Nijima being slightly older than Hachiman and Yukino, and Nishiyama older than all four of them but around the same age if not younger than Hiratsuka.**

 **For the next chapter:**

 **"** What do you see me as, doctor?" Hachiman asked in mild curiosity, not expecting the doctor to answer.

Dr. Yukinoshita looks him in the eye. "The bat that flies in the night to devour the mosquitoes that carry disease."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

My How I Met Your Mother Story is Darker than Expected…

Tsurumi Rumi loved her black hair and blue eyes. Her mother's features that she can be grateful for inheriting.

But her personality was definitely her fathers. She wouldn't describe herself as outgoing, socializing was hard for her, and she'd rather observe than be observed.

She was an only child and people say that's why she's like this. But Rumi found that wasn't the case, she just wasn't that good around people she didn't know all that well, it was harder for her than for most to be open to people. Because of that she has few people she can call her friends..

But she was close to her father. Someone like her who wasn't all that good around other people. They share the same shortcomings and that's what made them grow close. After school, she meets up with him after work so they could go home together.

But every week he had a new job, a new place to work and that's where most of the fun is. He didn't work in an office or behind a desk. He was too much of an outdoors man for that, they both were. Being cooped up all day surrounded by people they could drive them both crazy.

She didn't mind taking a bus to where he worked, for her it was half the fun, seeing new places and taking different routes around Chiba. Like a new adventure every time.

When she arrived at the construction sight, the other workers seemed to have gotten used to seeing her around, they didn't know her specifically but they knew who she came here for.

Rumi didn't have to ask around to find her father. She found him where she always found him, working on a metal pipe, but this one was admittedly bigger than the one's in their house.

He was working on a giant pipe that was the size of a tire and stretched to almost the entire length of the construction site, he was operating a big pipe cutting machine, a loud piece of equipment that can cut through metals pipes by having cutter wheels that wrap around them like a chain.

She kept at a safe distance that was close enough to get a good look, closer to the offices than the actual construction. Her view was perfect, and she could see her father do what he does best.

Rumi loved watching her dad work. It sounds strange, to be fascinated seeing your father do his job. Only Rumi's father was considered by most to be pretty good at his. The best she'd like to boast when seeing others try to do what he does.

He operated the heavy tool as if he was born with it, nothing seemed to matter except for him, his tool, and the pipe he was cutting. His concentration was mesmerizing. Even motivating. Because like most construction jobs, there is always that hint, that small possibility of something going wrong, and that small likelihood of accident seems to grow the bigger the tool you worked with.

He spun the tool around, using his strong arms to pull the cutter toward him in a clockwise way, the cutting wheels send flakes and ringlets of metal to the ground, the noise of screeching metal continued until finally, with one last pull, the pipe cutter made a complete circle and the seemingly unbreakable pipe split in two.

With a job well done, Tsurumi Tatsumi finally lets himself acknowledge his daughter's presence, he waves at her as he always does. As if he knew all along she was watching him.

Rumi waves back and smiles brightly, but he can't see it.

A cloud of dust obscure his vision.

His gloved hands were dirty, dirt, oil, and metal falling from it as he waved. He was too hasty in greeting his daughter he forgot how messy his hands were, so he wipes away the excess oil and metal shavings on his work uniform, then he takes the towel around his neck and starts shaking it off him.

But a single metal clipping falls inside his clothes.

He doesn't notice it.

It was just a small chip that landed on his shirt.

The piece of metal stayed with him until it landed on Kayo Takahashi's pajamas while he was putting her back where he murdered her.

* * *

 _A cannibal serial killer._ Hiratsuka thought in her office. _That's what we're dealing with. A cannibal serial killer._

The literal stuff of nightmares, the monsters you only read about, morbidly study from the safety of psychology books and historical accounts.

Never do you make a profile for one, let alone have to catch one.

Hiratsuka looks at the pictures of the missing girls, all innocent and sweet, smiling at her without a care in the world.

He's probably passed them through his digestive system by now. The bastard.

Seven young girls…a deranged psychopath's meal.

Hiratsuka feels the gastric acid in her stomach rise, but holds it down with sheer rage.

She takes one look at the map, dots of possible abduction locations with no recognizable pattern. Mocking her.

She pounds at it hard with her fist.

The image of the killer in her head as she keeps hitting the map, over and over, thinking "Where?"

Where?

Where!?

WHERE!?

Hiratsuka only stops when a few pictures fall. Doing what exactly as her anger management coach taught her; she takes a long breathe before letting out a puff of suppressed rage.

For a second she found her center. Her phone rang again, she lets the phone ring for a bit before ignoring the call.

It's not even nine yet, and her phones rang more times than she could count, her bosses and the bureaucrats wanting answers that she doesn't have yet.

They're impatient. Meaning they're backed in a corner.

She has to smile. Her higher-ups have it worse than her ever since today's headlines came out.

 **Serial Killer on the Loose.**

 **Targeting Schoolgirls with Black hair and Blue eyes**

Ever since the story broke out, public has been giving their concerns. They're scared and they should be.

 _And when people are scared, they blame the police._ Hiratsuka picks up the photos and puts them back into place, the trivial chore numbing her mind enough to perfectly grasp this situation _._

"God, this is really fucked up." She said, holding a picture of a girl that may have been eaten by another human being.

This was no longer a string of unrelated kidnappings. This was now a murder case, and if Hikigaya was right, only the latest in a trend.

She needs him now more than ever, the talented profiler as gifted as he is ostracized, the only person available with the training and the skills that could catch this killer.

The Criminal Profiler. The only profiler in the world whose insight she can trust.

Most of the time, profiling is disastrous for an ongoing investigation, leading investigators down wrong trails and prolonging the investigation.

When the _official_ profile is released to the public, mouth-breathing idiots often make accusations, citing that their neighbor or co-worker has the same profile, even though they have neither the experience nor the training required to profile a person.

Worst, if the killer finds out for sure or by instinct that the police have profiled him, throws a monkey wrench into the investigation by changing his modus operandi for no other reason than to trick the police.

He becomes a fox doubling back on his tracks on the hounds because he knows where the hounds are, and how close they are to catching him.

It's that reason alone that the ever efficient Japanese Police Force tend not to rely on Profiling, citing them as inaccurate and subject to biases.

They were right of course, profiling is not an exact science. Only overly romanticized to the point that profilers are all gifted detectives and psychic investigators in fictional works.

A common perception, even a professional like Hiratsuka had harbored.

Profilers in general are used to _exclude_ people off the list of suspects, not describe them to the point that they can describe the color of their shoes. That was until Hikigaya Hachiman returned from his studies abroad.

Changing the game entirely. Giving a new light into criminal profiling. His profiles weren't just accurate, they were downright terrifying, meticulous to the last detail that made more than a few people wonder if he was staging these crimes to take the credit for solving them.

Another common perception, Hiratsuka had harbored, regrettably.

In one particular case, Hikigaya describe the perpetrator of murder so perfectly, one of the police officers overhearing the profile actually knew of a person that matched the profile living next door to him. In the end, the police officer's neighbor was arrested because not only did he fit the profile, concrete evidence and witness reports were found that he was at the scene of the crime and he later confessed to the murder to avoid capital punishment.

A feat that makes forensic psychiatrists everywhere read all his case files. Journals have been published entirely on Hikigaya's foresight, making him out as a new breed of investigator whose genius defined a new era. Others simply point out the exaggeration of Hikigaya's skills, notably by Hikigaya himself.

You'd think a person like that would be famous, but with great power comes great unlikability.

His skills make him simultaneously revered and resented by other police officers. They called him many things, "Psychic Detective" was the nicest Hiratsuka remembered if not.

"Crime-Drama Reject." was the mildest of the many insults that came Hikigaya's way.

"Hikigaya 'Killer's Eyes' Hachiman" and "Evil Eye Hikigaya" where the childish ones that stung.

The cruelest, Hiratsuka remembered was the honorary title of "Crime Loving Homocidephile."

Hiratsuka knew it was the cruelest, because she called him that in a fit of rage when he talked in gross-detail over the fantasies of killing several police officers and their immediate family members.

He was speaking in the mind-set of the Vigilante Killer, a serial killer responsible for the deaths of former yakuza members and petty thugs.

Hikigaya announced to them all of the killer's fantasies, how their fellow police officers were in danger, and instead of using that knowledge to narrow the net of suspects and make proper arrangements to protect the detectives working on the case, Hiratsuka dismissed it as nonsense, calling out Hikigaya as just another criminal waiting to happen.

Everything changed when their lead detective was attacked in his own home by the Vigilante Killer, he would have died if Hikigaya Hachiman hadn't been around, staking out the detective's home that night.

Calling for back-up, Hikigaya stopped the killer but ultimately, the Vigilante Killer escaped and the detective who was attacked could no longer serve in active duty because of injuries sustained.

Hiratsuka wasn't proud of that, she regrets it every day, thinking that if only she listened and not dismissed his warning as a hoax then maybe things could have been different.

But she didn't know him then, all she thought of him was an upstart who thought he was Japanese Sherlock Holmes schooling the useless police, fueling the belief that the personnel on her task force were to blame for the lack of results, that her and the investigators she worked with were too insular, that they couldn't think outside the box and were too constrained by the law to do what was necessary to solve the case.

He did none of that. And that only made Hiratsuka feel worse.

She was wrong about him, he never wanted the glory, or the thrill, not even results.

Because in the end, all Hikigaya Hachiman wanted was to give people- one's he didn't know and owed nothing to- the closure that was brought by justice for the victims.

When the Vigilante Killer was finally caught, and Hikigaya Hachiman refused to take any credit for arrest and gave it all to the task force, Hiratsuka wanted nothing more than to work with him again, treat him like the asset he was. Like a comrade he is. To give him the respect he deserved from one police officer to another.

It was unfair what the higher-ups did to him, dishonorably forcing him to resign over such a petty thing for the sake of public order and political opinion.

Now Hiratsuka needed him.

Needed his particular set of skills.

But now she had a high enough position to give him back his badge and enough sway to make sure he can keep it.

She was Commissioner Hiratsuka now.

And what's a commissioner without a mysterious, broody, night loving, unsavory individual to commission the jobs no one else can do?

On her table would be the first step, Hiratsuka looked over the request again, making sure that it sounded important enough. Enough bureaucratic bullshit to sway even the harshest tight-ass into consenting Hikigaya Hachiman's reinstatement into the police force.

She needed him on the team, not just as a consultant. The Japanese government would never allow a civilian to have that much access consulting on such a high-profile case.

Hachiman must be a detective again. It was the only option in the strict eyes of the Japanese Law.

That's what will put their dense minds at ease, a badge on Hikigaya Hachiman's shirt. The same one they ripped out.

But they haven't made it easy for her, apparently a few people have been locking doors ahead of her. Denying a few requests and making a mess out of the paper process, treating her like a hot potato, tossing her from department to department until eventually she's in HR requesting a requirement she knows Hikigaya can't get.

A letter written by a licensed psychiatrist permitting return for active duty.

* * *

After being rejected time after time, she found one doctor willing to listen at least hear her out.

At first glance, you wouldn't expect her to be a doctor, her blonde hair and polished nails scream fashion designer or hostess better.

Slut and whore for the most vulgar or honest.

Yet, none could deny that Dr. Miura Yumiko was every bit a licensed psychologist. One that courts deemed worthy of being called in to be a consultant.

She worked in the same university as Hikigaya, as a professor in the Psychology department. Originally, if Hikigaya said no to the case, Hiratsuka would have come to Dr. Yumiko for help regarding the missing girl's case.

She came back to Chiba University to maybe ask her for a letter, hoping that being Hikigaya's co-worker would make things easier.

Sadly, Hikigaya's _not_ as unpopular with the other teaching staff as she had predicted.

"No."

After being told that for the fifth time today, Hiratsuka's shouldn't even be surprised, yet she still tries. "All I said was Hikigaya's name."

The woman had the eyes of venomous reptile, as green as the snakes she probably eats for the extra venom in her voice.

"I want nothing to do with him. Ever."

Hiratsuka sighed, and let her hand pound on the chair she sat. She takes a nice, long look around the university office, and damn was it small. A fire hazard with all the papers stacked on leaning towers that clung to the wall, how Dr. Miura could fit a desk in here was a feat only befitting a Tetris master.

 _This is a waste of time_. The police commissioner thought as the lack of sleep and rejections finally getting to her. _I should just get back, solve this case without Hikigaya's help._

And if she can't, another girl might get kidnapped, killed, and then eaten.

She couldn't let that happen. She won't let that happen. If Hikigaya Hachiman can solve this case faster, then Hiratsuka had a duty to make sure he gets that chance.

And if she can't, Hikigaya's prediction would come true and another girl would get taken.

And to her knowledge, he's never been wrong with a profile before.

"What do you want with him anyway?" The sound of Dr. Miura's voice brings out of her thoughts and back to the reality harsh where no psychiatrist would give Hikigaya consent.

But one was apparently asking her a question.

Hiratsuka thought about it, and found no harm in telling the truth. "I'm just trying to get him his job back." To put him back on the field to lead the charge.

For a second, Miura didn't look hostile. Only unconvinced. Her look made Hiratsuka feel like a shady con artist in a cheap suit.

"Is that all?" she asked, her eyes narrowing in skeptical hostility.

"No." Hiratsuka might as well be honest, lying will only get her reported and PR will. "A psychiatric evaluation would help ease myself into the thought of putting him in active duty."

She wanted to trust Hikigaya, but Hiratsuka can't forget the way he acted in the bathroom, the conflicted panic in his eyes. The desperate need to be somewhere- anywhere else. To talk about be anything else. To be alone.

"From what I've seen, Hikigaya has serious personal problems that go deeper than this case." The look on his face as he explained to her the thoughts going through the killer's mind, like seeing someone gnaw their own leg off. Hiratsuka feared if she pushed one more time, something would break.

It wasn't that simple unfortunately, Hikigaya knows something she doesn't. He knows things that might break this case wide open, but he's suppressing it. She knows he is. Suppressing it because he's scared of what's inside.

But she can't blame him. Not after what she's seen.

"It's scary how he works. Like he's possessed or something." Hiratsuka could almost call it supernatural, How Hikigaya becomes less human more drone in that state. Nijima even joked that maybe Hikigaya is psychic and just didn't know it.

"I almost told him to stop when I first saw it." She nearly did, observing him from a far was nerve-racking. Like watching a skyscraper swaying in the breeze. Setting off all her instincts to have her senses watch him carefully.

"All abilities have a price, his is just heavier than most." came Miura's gentler voice, a softer tone than Hiratsuka thought she could ever make, a sad little line that felt tragic without even trying. Hiratsuka watched her, but Dr. Miura seemed to busy herself with something in her desk. A melancholy growing as the sound of her fumbling became the only thing that could be heard.

Hiratsuka gave a small nod in agreement, her shoulders slouching. Hikigaya seems to be the subject of depression, even just discussing Hikigaya could leave your mood less bright.

Hiratsuka found something redeeming in his suffering, a selflessness she discovered about him, a new light to him that blossomed in her mind.

"Despite that, he seemed unwilling to stop. It's like he has this need…"

Dr. Miura knew what she was going to say and said the version she knew. "To inflict himself with as much psychological pain as possible in a misguided attempt to help people he doesn't even know because he thinks he's worth less than anyone else and that nothing anyone can say will stop him from thinking that way." She finished her rant and looked right at Hiratsuka, whose image of a selfless Hikigaya just shattered, replaced by the picture of a self-depreciating loner who believes he deserves to suffer.

In that moment, Hiratsuka saw something in Dr. Miura Yumiko. The way she spoke of Hikigaya wasn't criticism at a mere professional point of view, but a genuine concern for him that can only come from worry.

A worry Hiratsuka knows all too well, because Hiratsuka was also young and made silly- stupid mistakes once.

"You know him pretty well then." She knew from experience that they had to be. You don't get angry over someone you don't care about.

"The idiot will try to deny it, but yeah, I consider that creep my friend." The psychiatrist said, her wall of harshness and jagged edges going up. "Remember that when you put him out there without a way back!"

Hiratsuka's been a cop long enough to know when she was being threatened. And Miura's threat felt real.

Usually she'd have pinned her in an arm-lock by now. A woman Yumiko's size shouldn't be so bold when addressing a highly trained police officer.

Instead of a confrontation, Hiratsuka had other ideas.

"I swear to you that as long as I'm in charge, he won't get too close to." Hiratsuka promised, choosing diplomacy over violence this time around.

Every time Hikigaya's on duty he'll have at least one member of her team with him. After every case, she'd get him help. And if she puts him out there, Hiratsuka already has someone in mind to help.

"Yet so want him to profile this…cannibal you're after? You want him to get into the head of a serial killer who eats teenage girls?" she makes it sound like adding high-explosives in a fireworks festival.

"No, doctor. I want him to _catch_ this cannibal." Hiratsuka corrected, catching Miura off guard.

"And he will because there are lives at stake."

In Hiratsuka's mind, Hikigaya was already reinstated out in the field, a part of her team, her best and brightest investigating the killer, and putting him behind bars waiting to be hanged to death.

That is Hiratsuka's goal, her mind was already made up, and Miura will not get in the way of that. A better option was available, and Hiratsuka had a feeling Miura would want to reconsider if she asked.

"But I'm no expert." She admitted. "I'm a police officer, not a shrink. So I'll ask if _you_ want to be his way back." Hiratsuka offered. Knowing for a fact what this offer meant. Many psychologists would kill to have the opportunity to study Hikigaya Hachiman up-close. To have the honor of calling the reclusive profiler as one of their patients.

The tempted look on Yumiko's face was just that, tempted. She stays in silence for a minute before eventually shaking her head.

"No. We're only friends because we don't mix it up with work and if there's one thing I know that will piss Hikio off is someone studying him while acting like a friend."

How responsible.

Miura might not look the part, but she's a professional deep down. And from her response, one could only assume she has experience with mixing work with friends, an observation most investigators should have seen.

But all Hiratsuka got from that was;

"Hikio?" Hiratsuka's voice came out mocking, but that was only the surprise. Hopefully Yumiko could see that from all her glaring. "I've been told you two were close, I didn't actually believe it but..."

"Me and Hikio are friends, just leave it at that."

Hiratsuka wonders just how close the line was for being friends, but she holds back her curiosity.

Letter first, Hikigaya's relationship status later. She told herself.

"What do you think is Hikio's strongest drive?" Yumiko asked, as if testing how well the commissioner would respond.

Hiratsuka thinks about it, but the answer always seems to be one thing.

"Shame."

She seen the same thing for years, whenever a law-abiding citizen makes a mistake and gets thrown in jail or when a student embarrass himself in front of a class, she sees that in Hikigaya. Shame. The shroud of shame his peers have put on and he's resigned himself to wear for the rest of his life.

"He's ashamed of what he is. Of what the imagination turns him into."

"He's not proud of his gift, but most of all he knows what happens when he doesn't use it. Or to be exact, let it use him."

Pleased by the answer, Yumiko nods sadly, before adding.

"He's a good man, but he's scared of rejection he's felt it before and ever since, scared of what happens when one day that which makes him so appealing to the angels, makes him look even more like a demon."

"So he's afraid of what people think?" To Hiratsuka, such a thing shouldn't even happen to such a promising young profiler.

"It's not just what they think. It's how they act!" Dr. Miura slammed her fist on her desk, an outburst she immediately regretted as she knocked a few pencils and pens down unreachable places.

"No psychiatrist, at least not the ones who are hired by police, will ever want to have Hikio back, there's people in-charge who won't let him."

"They're conspiring against him?" Hiratsuka had her suspicions, but to think Hikigaya was this unpopular was beyond unfair.

Yumiko shakes her head.

"The opposite. They're looking out for him and for themselves?" she spat out with just as much respect for the people she was talking about as her spit.

Her voice become low, a frustrated rasp in her voice. Yet she began to speak with caution of the very real danger that was Hikigaya's stability.

"To them, Hikio is a live-grenade, whose detonation is imminent and no one wants to be the one to blame when he goes off inside something as important as the Japanese Police."

And Hiratsuka got her answer to why no one wanted to help. An answer like that almost makes her want to change her decision, to turn back around and just leave the status quo as is. Leave Hikigaya where he is. And act just like the rest of them.

Never.

"Grenade or not, he's the one who'll solve this case." Hiratsuka bet against him once, it won't happen again. She has a faith in him this time, the kind that he should've had a long time ago. Maybe if he did, he wouldn't be such a mess.

"If he blows up, I'll fall on top of him myself." Hiratsuka had done more for allot less. And her eyes showed it.

Locking her purple eyes with Miura's green, outright telling her the she will not let this one go. That she is not the same as those police officers who can't see Hikigaya Hachiman's value.

At last, Miura conceded. "Oh, my God…Fine!" She pulls out her pen and writes something down on her small desk, it wasn't a letter, cancelling Hiratsuka's victory dance.

"I won't write you a letter." On this, Miura will not budge. "It would be unprofessional, and I'd hate to lose my job."

Hiratsuka nods "I understand." she truly did, in more ways than one.

"And like, if that happened I'd totally report you for psychological problems, like a dictatorial personality and work place psychopathy or something that cause workplace hostility."

"I underst- wait what?"

"But I know someone who would be willing to look into him, a practicing psychiatrist, they say she's the best in the country."

Back from her initial shock, Hiratsuka asks. "Who says that?"

"The other psychiatrists in the country."

Miura hands Hiratsuka the note, written on it was an address in the richer part of Chiba.

"Give her a session or just a few minutes with him, if she thinks Hikigaya can take the pressure of this case, then it's good enough for me. I'll write the letter myself if she vouches for him."

"Is she that good?" Hiratsuka asks sceptically. It's a bit of stretch that there was a psychiatrist skilled enough that a single session was all they needed to get read on a person.

"Better." Yumiko sounded bitter when she admitted it. And Hiratsuka liked her even more now. "Just be careful though, she's not for the faint of heart."

"What's her name?"

* * *

Dr. Yukinoshita watches her patient weep in his, studying him with an inscrutably expression to hide her true feelings on the matter.

As her patients opens up his heart to her Yukinoshita just stares, giving him nothing, unblinking, almost uncaring in how little she reacted to her patient's feelings of sorrow and inadequacy.

Because she didn't care.

If the government hadn't made it a law to give hikikomori's compulsory mental health care, Yukinoshita wouldn't bother with such a client.

One who wastes his precious time complaining about his loneliness and inability to socialize because of expectations too great to achieve, blaming the world for his inability to live in it, citing things such as _normies_ and _pressure_ that can't let him be who he is.

And now he's weeping.

All over her furniture no less.

"Why am I like this?!" he cried out like a sickling pig, then he began rubbing the tears flowing from his reddened eyes with sleeves of the jacket his parents paid for.

By far the biggest offense today, was his complete lack of a handkerchief.

For the sake of his clothing, Yukinoshita offers him a box of tissues she keeps near. Things like these tend to happen from time to time.

In Fujio's case, it's every time.

When the tears start dying down, Yukinoshita decides it's her turn to speak. She heard a fleeting mention of this as one of his fears, and just has to know what it means.

"You're afraid of becoming a…" Yukinoshita stoops to suppress a cringe, the term was so stupid she can't even properly remember it. "…a sorcerer."

"A wizard." Fujio corrected her. "If you stay a virgin until thirty you become a wizard."

Yukinoshita barely stopped herself from reacting, she had never heard of something so miserable in her life. To her knowledge, the average age to lose one's virginity is seventeen.

It was exactly this lack of sexual activity that led to Japan's population to plummet. Yukinoshita even wrote a paper on it.

"And you don't think you'll be able to find a sexual partner because you believe your current status as a hermit living of your parent's hard earned money prevents you from being appealing to sensible women."

"Y-You don't have to make it sound so cruel."

He didn't say she was wrong.

"Fujio. People are inherently different and are dreams and aspirations don't often coincide with the life given to us." She means every word, but none of it seemed to help Fujio. "It is only through effort that we can move."

She tended not to do this, forcing her philosophy in her patients, but in the case of Fujio, it has to be done.

"I can't…I'm just too crazy."

To a person who's studied years on human psychology, hearing someone incorrectly diagnose themselves was the last straw.

"Crazy?" Yukinoshita asks in a seemingly calm voice.

"You know, not right in the head."

"In exactly what way do you think you're mental faculties are different?"

"Huh?"

Perhaps she used vocabulary to advance for him.

"Let me rephrase that, Fujio." She prefers using her patients given name, makes them more susceptible. "What do you think is wrong with you that you can't succeed?"

"I'm neurotic…" Fujio said as meekly as a lamb "I suffer from anxiety e-everytime I-I go outside. And I have this existential crisis, like I shouldn't belong. And I suffer from depression a lot too, so I guess I must be neurotic."

"The term neurosis has no longer being used by the psychiatric community for over twenty years now, Fujio." Yukinoshita corrected politely, barely hinting of her annoyance.

"Oh." was all the sound Fujio made.

"To characterize yourself in such away, you've already defeated the purpose of trying to be better. Stop hiding behind the preconceived mold psychology tries to fit you in and improve yourself."

Yukinoshita notes the look on Fujio's face, no doubt he's already been given the same lecture by other psychiatrist and immediate family.

As incorrigible as this man is, Yukinoshita simply has more ways to manipulate him.

"It can't be as bad as you think." Yukinohita forces herself to sound genuinely caring, adding a warmth in her voice that felt like vinegar to her. "There's plenty of people just like you, suffering from the exact same things, and a lot of them are making steps towards reforming themselves. Why shouldn't you?"

Yet, despite her attempt. Fujio eyes still looked like that of a scared little rabbit. Cowering at even the slightest possibility of failure.

"But I'm so depressed." He sounds almost ready to cry again.

 _Depression by your own creation. A state you subject yourself to as an answer to your own shortcomings and lack of ability._

But no matter, the cure was simple. Highly effective for virgins.

"Then I recommend this."

Yukinoshita opens her wallet and hands him a shiny black calling card too shiny and decorated to be a business card.

Taking the card, the realization takes a while to sink in until it finally dawned on Fujio. "Is this a-"

"An escort service. I believe that certain problems regarding male image and psychology can be solved with sexual release. And I mean _real_ release, not just the depressing self-gratification with your hands and a screen."

Quite frankly, that just makes things worse in Yukinohita's opinion.

"I don't want to…"

Yukinoshita knew his immediate response would be to think himself better than that, he shouldn't need to pay for sex. That his manhood was a gift to women everywhere and he was simply finding someone worthy of it.

Yukinoshita will try to break him down gently.

"What? To rely on money to have sex? That you're simply too good for whores? Fujio all women are whores; the ones who do it for money are just the cheapest, it's the ones who ask for houses and cars that are most depressing, and the ones who ask for your life in return to be the most demanding. Don't you agree?"

In truth Yukinoshita has no problems with prostitution and prostitutes in general, they have an integral role in society, and as her studies have found; legalized prostitution actually decreases the likelihood of domestic abuse and divorce. But an illogical being like Fujio wouldn't be able to handle such logic, a misogynistic quote would suffice to change his perception enough to try.

"Be a man. I recommend Neko-chan, she caters to those with weak perceptions of themselves as well as those with peculiar fetishes."

Yukinoshita shrugs, wanting to look nonchalant. Friendly as they called it.

"Or don't. I'm your psychiatrist and nothing more. I'm here to guide you and nothing more." Her policy has always been "Not to give a starving man a fish but teach him how to fish."

But simply forcing a man to fish would gain nothing, instead, she'll make her man want to fish. Make him think this was all his idea.

"In truth, there's no shame in using whores. It's only recently that society has deemed relying on prostitutes as the only option for unattractive men to have sex."

Yukinoshita checks her watch and almost smiles.

"It seems our time is up." Yukinoshita rises from her seat elegantly and ushers her patient out the door and opens it for him.

Where Hiratsuka was waiting for her.

"Dr. Yukinoshita?"

Frowning, Yukinoshita stares at the lab coat wearing woman, observant of the firearm on her hip and the tight fitting bullet proof vest under her tight blouse.

Yukinohita puts on a calm but irritated mask befitting the situation. "This is a private exit for my patients, if you want to make an appointment, please call my office so we can schedule and an appointment at a later date."

"My apologies doctor, but I'm with the Chiba Police And this is for a case."

Hiratsuka opens up her labcoat to show her badge and Yukinoshita nods.

"I see."

"May I come in?"

"You may wait in the waiting room." she tells the police officer.

That doesn't happen often to Hiratsuka, showing off her badge and credentials usually gets her in to places instantly.

It wasn't a "No!", so it's a small victory for Hiratsuka.

Yukinoshita turns her attention on her patient "I'll see you next week, Fujio. Call me if there are any changes after your session." Her patient, a man with the hair and pale skin of a hermit otaku, looks down and blushes before walking past Hiratsuka.

Now Hiratsuka felt bad, she didn't mean to embarrass the poor guy.

Yukioshita's gaze goes from her patient and sets it on to Hiratsuka. "Unless of course, that this is about him."

Comically, Fujio looked panic for a second. Before Hiratsuka assured him. "Oh, no. This is all about you doctor."

At that, Yukinoshita blinks and forces a flat smile.

The door of Dr. Yukinoshita's office closed, and Hiratsuka found a seat on the sofa and began to wait.

Hiratsuka remembered the last time she waited this long in a doctor's waiting room was when she was eight years old and her mother brought her in for an appointment, she was seventh in line and the doctor took at least an hour on all her patients. By the time it was her turn, every inch of eight year old Hiratuka Shizuka's schoolgirl sketch book was filled doodles. Morbid ones depicting the destruction of the small clinic she wanted nothing more than to see being crushed under the feet of a giant, toad summoned by a sage of Mount Mika _something_ buru.

Right now, Hiratsuka wished she brought along some paper work to get some work done while waiting. Or at least some paper she can scribble on.

Anything would be better than having to read all these magazines about gourmet, fine dining and surgeon's digests.

When Dr. Yukinoshita's door finally opens, Hiratsuka almost jumped out of her chair in joy.

"Please, come in." were the sweetest words Hiratsuka heard coming out of the doctor's mouth.

The police commissioner stepped into the office and had to stop herself from whistling.

Ornate antique furniture, a bit dimly lit, but the natural lighting seems to be covered by large, heavy curtains for privacy.

"As expected doctor, your office is a classy as they say."

Yukinoshita smiles, a forced one but Hiratsuka was too busy to notice. "And what do they say about me?" The doctor trails Hiratsuka, always only a step behind, her footsteps silent, almost predatory.

"Good things I assure you." Hiratsuka wants to be on her good side, no doubt for the favour she wants to ask.

"May I ask, what do you mean by this is all about me?"

Hiratsuka wanted to answer, but first she had to make sure that the walls weren't listening.

"No secretary, doctor?"

Yukinoshita shakes her head in a forlorn way, "She left suddenly. Apparently, her heart didn't belong behind a desk."

In actuality, her heart belonged in Yukinoshita's refrigerator, marinating in sauce prepped for tonight's dinner.

Her secretary's liver was supposed to be for today's lunch, but due to Hiratsuka's untimely arrival, Yukinoshita had to dispose of it thoroughly.

Too bad, Yukinoshita already had tea to go with it.

"So we're all alone?"

Yukinoshita seemed impatient, her eyes looking at Hiratsuka as the police officer kept exploring her space, seemingly looking for something.

"I have no other clients, today."

"I see you're a woman of culture as well." Hiratsuka noted as she approached the corner of the office that didn't look so sterile. A small art studio had everything you'd expect, from a half-finished painting of renaissance art on canvas, a table dedicated solely for sketching with architectural sketches and anatomical drawings.

Very Leonardo Da Vinci, if you ask Hiratsuka. Who was unfortunately, the only artist she could name that could sketch anatomy.

"Look at that detail…" she remarks at the lines so fine they look almost digitally added.

Yukinoshita takes that compliment with a small stride in her step.

"In my experience, scalpels make finer points than pencil sharpeners." To emphasise this, Yukinoshita picks up a scalpel and pencil and carves the pencil to an almost needle point.

When Hiratsuka turns away, Yukinoshita puts down the pencil.

But not the scalpel.

It stays in her hand, held tightly in a reverse grip.

Yukinoshita listens to Hiratsuka, her blue eyes drifting to the police commissioner's jugular. Slowly, she closes the distance between them, masking her footsteps with the rhythm of her breathing, syncing it up with Hiratsuka's.

Looking back at Yukinoshita, Hiratsuka saves her own life by saying. "I hear you won a national competition for your sketches, doctor. When you were still a student in Kyoto University."

Hiratsuka's words just made the arteries in her neck an even bigger target for Yukinoshita, a target she'd already locked on, but kept losing.

Patiently, Yukinoshita slowly guides Hiratsuka away from her art works. Walking across the middle of the large office.

Now Yukinoshita had all the space she needed, and with Hiratsuka's back turned towards her. Yukinoshita found her moment, slowly raising the scalpel in her hand.

She's close now. Well within striking distance. Her grip on the scalpel was perfect, her pulse was steady, and her voice was calm enough to give an observation.

"I'm beginning to think you're investigating me, Commissioner Hiratsuka."

The small accusation catches Hiratsuka off guard, as Hiratsuka paused, no doubt to explain or lie, Yukinoshita took a last step towards her unwitting victim.

It was then Yukinoshita's blue pupils dilate, turning cold and focused, a detached and almost unearthly light shined through them.

She grows still, a predator ready to strike at her prey. Her leg muscles grow tense, storing energy ready to pounce. Her only regret was the mess she'd make, the amount of bleach and laundry she'd have to do getting all of Hiratsuka's blood out of her clothes and floor.

Like the night sky the moment before lightning strikes, the room was as eerily quiet.

But then Hiratsuka's voice broke it.

"Investigating? Oh, no it's not like that. Dr. Miura Yumiko from the psychology department of Chiba University recommended you to me. Told me stories about you, so don't worry, I'm not looking into your practices."

Ever so slightly, Yukinoshita's demeanour changes, her grip on the scalpel loosens, and she no longer finds the need to mask her presence. Her hand falls back to her side innocently.

"Are you in the market for a psychiatrist then, Commissioner?" Yukinoshita asks, putting the scalpel down on the desk inconspicuously. "It would be an honour to have a decorated police officer as one of my patients."

"I am but not for myself." Hiratsuka explained. "It's a police matter."

"Oh?" Yukinoshita's expression becomes one of curiosity, it's been a while since she's been curious of something. Her face has trouble remembering the feeling of wanting to know.

"I need you to help me on a psychological profile." Hiratsuka quickly added in a hush tone.

Interest peaked, Yukinoshita's curiosity got the better of her.

"Whose?"

* * *

"Yo! Hikigaya Hachiman!"

My name was called, but after learning to ignore name calling for years, I don't immediately respond. I shouldn't.

My focus was on the target.

The classic bull's-eye. A good distance away. _Olympic_ -level distance away. So I'm testing my limits? So what?

I took a deep breath, then pulled on the string of my takedown bow.

The 45lb draw weight felt nothing to me anymore, my arms and back already conditioned to such strain. As I pull it all the way back, my cheek feels the edges of the fletching of my arrow, meaning I've pulled it properly.

I take aim, not using any sights, my eyes are too unfocused for such a thing, but instead I aim using instinct, the kind of aiming you don't see in the Olympics but in hunting game.

Carefully, I aligned the arrow with my aim, balancing my weight on the uneven ground, controlling the bow and all its weight, and keep my back as straight as it can be.

As I feel the tension dig into my fingers, I took a deep breath.

Then I release.

Suddenly without warning that it even surprises me.

I barely see the arrow fly, only a line of neon green and the target shaking, then the sound of an arrow embedding into my target from a distance. A thump of triumph.

I smile.

Bull's eye.

I congratulate myself, taking in the small victory. After the six failures dotting an ugly constellation around the target.

"Nice."

"Yeah, not bad, man."

I keep my back to them as I put my glasses on first. I don't wear my glasses when I practice the bow, the last time I did it got caught in the string and flew out of my face.

Besides, I'm far sighted.

With my glasses securely on I turn and finally acknowledge my small audience consisting of Nijiman and Nishiyama.

Do these two ever come separately? Or are they a buddy cop drama I wasn't aware of. Now that I think about it, Nijima's leather jacket aesthetic sure watched well in contrast with Nishiyama's older man, suit and tie, he's also got that "I'm about to be too old for this shit." look he's got going for him.

"Don't you two have a case to solve?" Buddy cops or not, they still shouldn't come around my house without an invitation. So forgive me for sounding grouchy.

"We're doing just that." Nijima told me as if explaining everything. "The commissioner told us to come and get you."

I give them both a look.

And Nijima gets it. "Okay…that may have sounded wrong."

"We aren't arresting you."

I raise my hand to stop them from dragging this joke on. "I get it."

So the commissioner's sick of fetching me herself and sent her two lackeys. She's probably worried I might hide in the bathroom again.

I would have, but not because of the case. I just can't waltz into a police station without a badge, people will suspect me for a being criminal or something.

"She was worried about you." Nishiyama said. "But I guess everyone's a little on edge with what we found out. So will you come with us or should we tell Hiratsuka you're not coming?"

Even though they're giving me a choice, why do I feel I'm in the scene where the P.I. gets forcibly taken by the two, oversized thugs, because their boss has a job that only the detective can do and he has no choice in the matter but to comply?

I guess it has more to do with something I didn't understand, some information I'm not aware. I've got a certain sense for something like this, comes with the job description and overall paranoia.

"Something happened. What did you find?" Why else would they make such an effort if they didn't find anything important?

The two share a look, Nijima mouths "Psychic." Before Nishiyama shakes his head at his partner and shows me a file.

"You were right. That piece of metal Ishiki found. It's from an industrial pipe. The kind only trained plumbers can use. A new composition too. So the constructions sites using them are limited, were narrowing down the search, but Hiratsuka needs you, she says to finalize the profile so we can start handing them out to the other police stations."

Figured as much.

Walking over to the target, I pull out my arrow before awkwardly trying to put in back in my shoulder quiver.

To my horror, they were following me, both of them watching me fail at quivering an arrow. I try to ignore that, make it look like being bad at putting an arrow back is ten times harder than pulling one out.

The pain between my ears returns, now a dull throb. I try to walk it off, hoping it won't last for much longer.

I put my bow and quiver of arrows away, feed my dogs a big meal and lock up my tiny house before I take the back seat in their police issue black sedan.

The throbbing's still there, just somehow duller.

I lean over and ask the two buddy cops. "Can we stop by a drugstore first?"?

The drive wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be being in the backseat with two detectives.

My eyes felt heavy and my back starts to ache. _It's too soon for me to feel old and jaded._ I seat up right, adjusting my posture.

In the end we forgot all about that drugstore.

* * *

The office Hiratsuka brought me into was not in any way unexpected. It had everything you'd see in the office of a bad-ass police commissioner from the action-fueled 1980's.

Decorative plaques of past achievements covered the walls along with the immortalized photos of her with men and women who she served, trophies of karate tournaments lining the top shelves on the right side, on the left, a cased- and probably functional- Arisaka bolt-action service riffle hanging on the top and below that a boring desk that felt like bear trap to keep Hiratsuka from moving.

But there was one thing I wasn't expecting.

In the museum of a life of bad-assery that Hiratsuka calls her office, sat a woman with the kind of beauty that makes men murder their friends and mangakas write self-insert manga about.

She just sat there reading the profile I wrote. Completely engrossed by it.

Facing the desk, her left side to me. Her eyes fixed on my gruesome descriptions of a serial killer's mind.

Oblivious to me and Hiratsuka.

I could less if she noticed me or not.

But I noticed her.

Too much of her.

She had dark hair, ebony, like the sharp and flat keys of the piano. Tied up in bun for the singular reason of showing more of her slender neck and framing her delicate face.

Her skin looked pale, an unearthly kind of pale. Not like the corpses I deal with, but the paleness found in the illustrations of faefolk or fairies you see in medieval paintings.

I feel homeless in comparison to how well she's dressed.

Elegant and dressed sharply for firing employees. She's so neat I almost mistake for ex-military. She's wearing a charcoal grey woman's suit cut to her exact dimensions down to the molecule, I noticed. Now I can't seem to _un_ noticed how well the suit fits her.

The way she sat. The way she just seemed to not just exist in this particular space, but designed into it. How the lights of Hiratsuka's seemed to have been artistically moved to make her look better.

It was like looking at a masterpiece painting for the first time.

An instant fascination.

Understanding it without really knowing what it is you were looking at, but knowing exactly what the message the painter wanted to convey.

I believe the Psychological Crime Thriller Gods painted a picture whose sole purpose was to elicit a reaction from me.

Damn…they know how to paint a picture.

"Commissioner Hiratsuka. Who is this man?" she asked, looking at Hiratsuka as if this was her office.

"He's the one who wrote that report your nose-deep into."

She then looked at me with scepticism with those blue eyes of hers.

Blue just like the girls that were taken.

I freeze. Cold runs down my spine. She's no longer a painted figure to me, now she's a ghost haunting me with those blue eyes.

The same blue eyes I see every time I think about this case. She had the looks of all these girls, hair, eyes, height, even her flat chest makes me think about the killer's desire.

If she was a decade younger, our killer would've come for her too. Collecting her. Eating her. Her pale skin sizzling on a pan. Damn I need some sleep, or at least stronger aspirin.

I feel dirty now, pushed into the mud and cess that was my own attraction. The killer made it so, and somehow I can see him clearer. Like a foggy mirror.

 _Now we share a type._ I thought. _The cannibal and I._

And if there's one thing you don't want, is having similarities with a cannibal serial killer.

I have to remind myself that this is different. It's only natural that a single guy like me would be attracted to a woman my age who was tiers above me in the looks department.

Besides, I barely even know her. She's pretty. Sure. But I'm not obsessed with her to the point that I kill girls who remind me of her…Hmm, well damn.

The killer's killing girls that only _look_ like his special girl. Good breakthrough brain, keep it up and we might get out of this case with my sanity intact.

"So you're this profiler I've heard so much about."

I don't know how to respond to that. Should I say yes or do I have to make a quip to sound impressively witty.

"Dr. Yukinoshita, this here is Professor Hikigaya Hachiman, he's the profiler." I don't try to correct her on introducing me as _the profiler_ , I'm just thankful to be introduced, I hate introducing myself suddenly to a group of people or person, the longer I wait the harder it gets, it's so much better to have someone else introduce you.

"Hikigaya Hachiman, meet Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino, she's here to work on the profile, same as you." She says, I try not to notice how excited she sounds. This isn't one of those odd team ups you see in crime genres is it? Two unlikely partners that do unrealistically well despite their differences. If it is, Hiratsuka might just be the biggest crime-drama otaku I've ever met.

Per Japanese custom, Dr. Yukinoshita stands up and greets me with a curt bow, I follow the gesture. Our eyes almost meet for a second, thankfully my glasses' frames hide some of my eyes from her.

Her eyes stay on me, even when I look away.

Blue eyes that look like they were made of glacial ice. Damn, I've been rejected by girls with warmer eyes than hers.

Yet I'm drawn by their arctic gaze. Drawn to the northern bitterness for the promise of warm nights.

I took a seat and still feel her eyes on me, scrutinizing, I can't even tell if she's blinking or not. It makes me feel like I've done something wrong.

I haven't felt this self-conscious since the first day of college.

And just like college, I smell something that I've forever associated with all-nighters and test taking. I notice Yukinoshita's face twitch at the smell as well, no doubt familiar with the scent given her degree.

Hiratsuka just made us some coffee, the smell of freshly-made liquid emotional support brings back memories.

Hiratsuka puts it on the edge of her desk, offering it to us before plopping down on her oddly chosen doctor's chair that, now that I think about, suits her lab coat apparel nicely.

Instead of taking a cup, Dr. Yukinoshita walks towards the map where we keep track of the missing girls. I notice a freshly lined picture of Kayo Takahashi with her very own tack now in the map.

I try not to look at her and creep her out with my eyes. I fail when she leans into it for closer inspection, my sight drifts downwards. Watching like a perverted idiot as her skirt rises just a little bit, showing more of her creamy, milk-pale thighs…

I look away as fast I can forcing myself to look at the folder I complied, out of respect of course. Believe me, I'm not the kind of guy who'd ogle a girl.

Not really getting much out of this, I hand it to Hiratsuka, our eyes met and she gives me a knowing look, an amused smile on her face before she tilts her head to the right, making me follow her gaze back to Yukinoshita's…assessment of the map.

Keeping the humiliation to myself, I take a long sip from my coffee, using the mug as a barrier between me and Hiratsuka.

I got caught, there was no need to overreact. _It's okay too look._

"Has there been any confessions?" Yukinoshita asked, making Hiratsuka's face become irate.

False confessions are annoyances to every investigation, most if not all aren't even that clever or funny. I've had my fair share when doing even the most basic of cases.

"There has. No matter how awful the crime, there's always going to be false confessions. What's up with that?" Hiratsuka asks.

Bu the answer is simple, some people are just attention whores and trolls. My faith in humanity's dignity went away long ago. You can't post anything online these days without it receiving hate.

But while I tend to keep answers to myself, Yukinoshita doesn't seem to share my opinions on keeping opinions.

"The plain and perhaps regrettable fact is that it is part of the eternal human psyche and cycle for the normal individual to derive cathartic satisfaction and enjoyment from savouring the crimes of others, and from luxuriously dreaming of personally committing them." Yukinoshita says all that from the top of her head, as if she'd rehearsed it hours prior.

I recognize that quotation, hell it was on the very first criminal psychology book I read

"The Gates of Janus. Written by Ian Brady." The words leap from the tip of my tongue, too amazed that she read such a book. What is she, _Murderpedia_?

"So you read his work?" she asked sounding pleasantly surprised, that for some reason felt insulting.

I _nodshrug_. "I've read every book written by a serial killer." It wasn't a boast, its common practice to read the works of literate deranged murderers to get a better feel for their head space.

Most of it is sensationalized and overhyped, written for the sole purpose of inflating ego. But Brady's book is a rare one, more of a critique to books about understanding criminals, undermining psychology and the very notion of getting into people's heads.

"People love serial killers is the abridged version. Which explains all the letters and false confessions we've been getting lately."

Ever since Jack the Ripper, society has always had this obsession with serial killers. Studies show this is due to a morbid fascination people have with the worst of humanity. Recently however, our obsession with serial killers are similar to our love for tragic tales and horror flicks, experiencing dark emotions like fear and disgusts help purge them away. Experiencing them without really experiencing them, learning about serial killers is like skydiving for some people. Feeling the thrill of falling while not actually dying has been known to cure a fear of heights.

In short, everyone's a serial killer deep down, watching someone else do it keeps the impulse at bay.

With things quieting down, I reach for a cup of coffee. It keeps you awake and not much else, even Hiratsuka seemed to dislike the taste, presenting it on her desk for either of us to take but not getting one herself. Nonchalantly I take a sip.-

I've had worse.

Hell, I've _made_ worse.

I cradle mine, letting the hot mug heat up my twitching fingers, the small bit of warmth against the cold presence of Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino.

"How many confessions? Any of them containing details?" Yukinoshita asked and I can't help but not care. Confessions don't really help when the guy your after doesn't want to get caught.

Hiratsuka made her displeasure known, typing up something on her laptop with excessive force. "I got four confessions since last night. Twenty in total. None had details. Until…" she shows us what was on her screen.

It was blog: and the top article had a picture of Takahashi Kayo, of photos taken in the scene, of the Takahashi household.

"A reporter by the name of Sagami Minami posted this article, apparently she has insider information, a leak in the department. I'm still investigating the leak, but the public, and maybe even the cannibal knows we're tailing him."

I find myself clenching my mug too tight, spilling hot coffee on my fingers.

"Now I've had to disconnect my phone from all the confessions I've been getting." Hiratsuka vented with flick of her wrist at the phone.

That makes our jobs harder. A lot harder. This is the Freedom of the Press that ruins investigations. What's the point in making a profile if the killer is just going to act out of character to cover his tracks?

All for a few views and add revenue, some people are just too stupid or have no decency.

I search for the insult to describe this. "Tasteless." came out of my mouth, which at the moment had a lingering bad taste.

"You have problems with taste?" Yukinoshita asked me as she sat back down, I couldn't help but take a peek at her eyes, amazed at how curious they looked staring at me.

"Idiots and crime scenes leave a bad taste in my mouth." I take a sip of my coffee to wash it down.

"Then you must have poor eating habits."

You can say that, for the past five years I've been eating nothing but convenience store food and instant noodles.

"It gets easy to just swallow it down."

She hums a reply, it echoes a bit so that means she's humming into her coffee cup making it echo.

I can't help but notice she's staring at me, I'm used to being stared at so I can act like I'm oblivious to judging glances, but she's just looking right at me, she's not even hiding it.

"Most men have to concentrate on keeping eye-contact." She said suddenly, her voice holding curiosity in every tone.

That's only because men's eyes are naturally drawn to large breasts, dear. Yours aren't that much so I don't have to keep my eyes from wandering to them with eye contact.

"Perhaps you have bad experience with women."

At that, my eyes briefly – defiantly – look at hers. Blue eyes. Icy. Like those of a white dragon from an old card game.

I quickly look away, like I just looked directly at the sun.

I'm usually not that easily intimidated, believe me. It's just the way she looks. And I mean that both ways.

She looks gorgeous. And at the same time, she literally looks at me like I'm _not_ a creepy molester. It's almost unsettling whenever her eyes look at me.

Is this how other people feel when I look at them?

"In my experience, Japanese men have been so emasculated to the point of relying on the creation of sex bots, most of it stemming not from the pressure of conforming to being an employee of a large corporate bureaucracy, but failed confessions and unrequited love from women their age during adolescence." Dr. Yukinohita said, directing it at me all of a sudden.

Where did this come from?

I look at Hiratsuka. She just looks embarrassed and looks away.

Thanks, Hiratsuka. Great support.

"You don't seem to be homosexual, judging from how you looked at me." She says after one up-and-down glance.

The insult Hiki _gay_ a-kun comes to mind when she said that.

"But you didn't once act on that attraction. Hesitation comes from past failures. And a failure that has held you back from developing romantic relationships. Any relationships for that matter. You might also have experienced some harassment in your youth. Were you smarter than the other children or were you perhaps simply incapable of making long-lasting bonds."

Out of reflex, I say what I've always said. "I didn't make bonds because those bonds aren't real. In a few years those so called _friends_ move on, the only reason most people are friends in school was because you spend nine hours a day with them. Youth and the joys of it are all just hypocritical garbage sold to us in bulk, in the end none of it really matters; being social and having friends in youth didn't prepare any of us for the solitary life of Japanese working adult, we all end up alone, it was better to just start early, I say."

My throat was dry and my mouth was tired when I finished my rant, and suddenly, I feel like an idiot.

I am an idiot. Talking like that would only get me into trouble.

"And you see yourself as enlightened then. Everyone else is lower than you because they don't see how hypocritical and bleak the world really is. So why socialize with the herd if the truth you preach will only get you ostracized?"

I've heard that line before.

Wait a minute…

"Whose profile are you working on?" No wonder she was eying me so much, she was observing me like she would a patient.

I look to Hiratsuka, I don't need a degree in accusing people to know that this was her idea.

"Whose profile is she working on?"

I feel more than just betrayed, I feel ambushed. Hell, I feel like someone broke guest rights.

"We're both scientists, Professor. What we do is for the sake of knowledge, logic is our sword, curiosity our guide, we are the shield that protects the realms of education. I can't turn mine off just as you can't turn off yours."

By your logic, I'm not a fellow researcher in your eyes, doctor. I'm the experiment. No! I will not experience science in the perspective of a lab rat.

"Don't psychoanalyze me, doctor. You won't like me when I'm psychoanalyzed." I do a good Bruce Banner impression, in my FBI days, my fellow cadets joked that I even looked like an Asian Bruce Banner. Now I'm beginning to feel the similarities, but emotionally I'm more relatable the _other_ guy at the moment.

"I know getting inside people's heads give you a power trip that you can't get off without." For the first time in our entire conversation, she breaks eye contact. A small victory for me.

"But leave that in the sex dungeon you call your office."

I drop the mic.

But she had her own.

"A Freudian excuse? I see like most, you believe sex is the greatest impulse. That the human beings only objective is to propagate their genes. To satiate their lust and find release."

Why does she make it sound so hot?

"If that were the case, I can assume that means you feel release when you catch these unsavoury individuals."

The only release I get, is the thought of knowing there won't be another victim by their hands. But deep down, that's also a form of release.

A relief.

That doesn't mean I can let her be right. I won't show her anything that proves it and that's a victory for me. She's a know-it-all that feeds off being right all the time.

Her words don't hurt me. Words haven't hurt me since middle school.

"I'm sure there must be quite a rush, some people only think about killing, you experience the closest alternative without the liability. It must be quite a thrill, to indulge in mankind's oldest pastime, every time you close your eyes. If it felt good to the killer, it must certainly feel good to you."

Feel good? What am I to you, a serial killer? Do I really look so repulsive that you can see me enjoy causing death?

No. Nothing ever felt good about killing someone, even when I'm in the killer's place.

It's a dark fantasy that some people have killing. But they don't understand. Just how ugly and painful it really is to see a person who you could have known, met on the street, talk to about your hopes and dreams, worked with. A small light, a tiny bit of hope that could do so much more, so many possibilities and options, and have it snuffed out.

Gone.

Just like that.

And nothing else.

But I guess that's what makes it so appealing. How unspeakably evil it is. A fetish that you're curious in but never want to try.

And just one try would get you hooked, forever.

I've tried and the most I've ever gotten was second-high. A thrill you get when watching POV stunts on a GoPro.

But it's still there. A feeling. A tingle in the right places that makes it feel good. Positive reinforcement that has made my body learn to find some joy in the act of getting into a serial killer's head.

I never thought about that until know.

Not until she told me.

It's like she's towering over me, a giant looking down on scum. Looking at me with so much disdain I'm almost convinced that I am scum.

I see the look in her eyes. Her cold, superior blue eyes that make me fell less of a man. Less of a human being. I must look like deer to her, caught in a snare, a bullet with my name on it. Helpless because…

She's got one more in her.

"Now not even your headspace is entirely your own. It's now full of dark thoughts that you wish weren't yours but still feel it, clawing at the door, leaving your headspace without vacancy for anything else. Or anyone else."

She got me, I'm laid bare beneath her, exposed, naked, my internal organs out in display for her to gawk at.

My brain picked out of skull through my nose for her to scrutinize with those ice-blue eyes of hers.

She's got me. Understood me. Labelled me and checked off the boxes on the list labelled "What Makes Hikigaya Hachimnan a Freak."

I want to hate her but I can't.

Because…no one's understood me so well before.

But like that would save her.

"Rich girl." I state in retaliation.

"Excuse me?" she goes, her voice barely a whisper of irritation. She knew it was directed at her. A reflex from all the times she's been called that.

"Rich girl. You come from a wealthy family. Probably old money too. I bet you can trace your lineage to some samurai ancestry. A third- no second daughter."

"Exactly how did you come to that conclusion?"

"The five figure suit is a dead giveaway." It's worth more than all my outfits put together. "Then there's your profession."

I swear it's like I'm looking directly at a snarling ice dragon.

A reaction like that means I'm hitting her where it hurts.

"You're obviously not the first born, if so you'd be running your evil company as the CEO or something. But instead you're a psychiatrist, even in eighteenth century England, that was reserved by the second born child of a wealthy or aristocratic family. Considering the costs of a medical degree these days, you _have_ to be from money."

She genuinely looks surprised, and seems to realize herself that the mould she creates.

"But you didn't start out as a psychiatrist. No, you were once a surgeon." There's mostly guess work in this and allot of personal experience. But I'm pretty sure I've met enough doctors to tell them apart from the rest of the crowd. Surgeons in particular.

"Only a surgeon's hands are always so steady and clean."

"Because I wash my hands, I'm automatically a former surgeon?" she found the flaw in my deduction, but I've already encountered this once before.

"It's because you _obsessively_ wash your hands that you were a surgeon. Most people use soap and water, you have a routine of meticulous hand washing. I can smell a faint hypo-allogeneic beeswax on your palms. An old habit that keeps your palms from being dehydrated from washing your hands too much. A surgeon's old habit."

I see her clench her fists, rubbing the tell-tale wax in her palms together. I see her nostrils flare, not out of rage, but to sniff it out for herself. Judging from her expression, she smelled it as well.

"No doubt you were disgraced, in most cases, you got your patient killed during an operation. Ashamed, you switched to the less stress full psychiatry. Where the only cut arteries are the ones your patients do to themselves. "

I take a breath, and wait for her attack. She's the kind of person who defends by going on the offensive.

"A pretty big leap, don't you think? I could have many reasons to transfer to psychiatry." She once again, challenged my logic, my reasoning has a hole in it. I can see that. But I don't play the observation game with guesses and theories.

I play the person.

And we're all just the same, deep down. We're predictable.

"You're too prideful. You stopped being a surgeon because of your pride, a single death in your eyes is considered an offense too great, and that's why to protect your pride, you quit being a surgeon and went for psychology, where you can dissect people's minds instead of their internal organs."

By the end of it, Dr. Yukinohista has a dark look in her eyes, she looks angry enough to want to drown me. I got her there.

I don't even stop to smirk.

This isn't over, far from it.

I hit her somewhere that hurts hurts, so she's going to hit back with everything she has. I may have woken a sleeping tiger, and her claws are long and as sharp.

"It's the eyes isn't it? I can tell from how you hide them." she said. And I barely contain myself from rolling my eyes at her. I guess I can't blame her for picking an easy target. I just thought she'd be more imaginative than that.

I've heard all the insults. Every single time someone looks at me and judges me without even knowing me.

I know what she's going to say.

How I'm a vile, dirty, creep, that leers at girls with dirty thoughts in my head. How my eyes perfectly describe the terrible personality I have.

Say what you will, doctor. I've already developed a tolerance for it.

"I've seen this before on patients with deformities."

Deformities? My eyes aren't that bad.

"They believe they're poor social standing and social life is due to a disfigurement, you think of your eyes the same way. The eyes are the windows to the soul, yours are a reflection of the disfigured being inside, and the gods judged you as vile and evil and so gave the world a hint of your darkness through your eyes."

That just plain hurt. Burned even.

"But I have no doubt your classmates and peers have already said everything there is to say about your dead fish eyes. Which makes me curious, do you hide your eyes or do you hide behind them?"

Where's she getting at. Of course I hide my eyes. No one talks to me if I don't

"You're eyes are nothing but an excuse. You use it as such. Something beyond your control that lets you get away with not overcoming your weakness. You can't socialize and make long lasting bonds because you don't try. Those dead fish eyes of yours are nothing, I've seen many disfigured, and even freakish people make friends and even romantic relationships. You. What's your excuse?"

I can safely say that she is in fact the Ice Queen, because I'm frozen right now. The light of her eyes freezing me in place. Only my mouth could move.

I took control of my quivering lips. "My eyes."

"Your _eyes?_ Don't joke. If you really wanted to you could have overcame them, instead here you are blaming them for the shortcomings of your youth."

So it's _my_ fault then? Everything I've went through is my fault. Huh, I wish I've known that when I was being bullied in middle school, when girls kept spreading rumours about my _hikigerms_. Or that one time I just looked at a girl I suddenly found myself being scolded by my homeroom teacher for being a detestable person and a bother to the girls and classroom harmony.

Explain those doctor. Explain those!

I was this close to yelling when I realized she wasn't finished yet.

"And quite frankly, my dear Hikigaya. They don't even look that bad."

It's sad how that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my eyes.

Now I just can't in good conscience let it end there. With a smile I take her jab on the chin. If it affected me, I don't show it.

I'll never show it.

I wear it like armor now.

I just have to pretend I'm okay. Besides it's not all bad.

I've never had an argument this long before, never been motivated enough to be angry at someone, it's almost like a fight and I'm almost enjoying it.

This might be the most I've ever said to a woman in ten years. Having to keep up with someone…it's almost fun.

I already have a counter in me, an observation I made, I was about to give it before she makes a gesture for a cease fire, bringing her hand up.

"Before we continue verbally beating one another. For the sake of courtesy I have to ask; are you sure you want to play this game, professor?"

Even when she's being polite, I can still here her try to dominate and undermine me. Worst of all, she sounds like she believes she can decimate me.

Holy shit, she's having fun too.

In some sick, twisted, Freudian way, we both seem to be enjoying this.

With every bad memory telling me otherwise, I give her a smile, not a flirty one, she'd sue me for sexual harassment for that.

Just a cocky smile. "I'm afraid you'd lose, doctor."

Her mouth forms a thin line of smug.

Let the intellectual pissing contest begin.

* * *

Hiratsuka watched the ongoing brawl of sorts, watching each blow, forcing herself to look impassive at the low blows and personal attacks.

She felt like a referee watching a boxing match, only to learn that the opponents were too big for her, and stepping in could hurt her, turning her into a spectator instead.

"You were hated by most girls your age." Hikigaya said, convinced at his own statement.

Yukinoshita nods, conceding. "Your reasoning?" she challenged.

"You're pretty and talented, most girls hate girls who outshine them. To them you must've eclipsed them all, they probably put garbage on your desk every day."

Yukinoshita smugly shakes her head, "No, but they did steal my shoes from my locker."

Hachiman nods. "Children can be cruel."

That's just plain awful, Hiratsuka thought while watching the scene unfold.

"You're practice archery, caused by a childish association with your given name and the God of Eight Banners."

"That was only partially the reason." was Hachiman's response. "Let me guess, it's the way I have a callous in my hands, doctor?"

Yukinoshita looks offended at that statement.

"Not even a trained eye can spot that without closer inspection. No, it's written all over your face, specifically your right cheek, there's a faint line right below your eye. It's not a scar for it should be lighter than the skin around it. Then I remembered those Olympic archers, the proper way to draw the bow." Yukinoshita mimics the drawing action of the arrow, revealing the closeness of her right, drawing hand is to her cheek.

"The fletching of their arrows scratch their cheeks as they release, and since yours are at least a decade old, and from your speech patterns indicate an old love for anime targeted for males, all adding to the conclusion of you learning to use the bow and arrow at high school age because of delusionary media."

Hachiman raises his hand in recognition before leaning closer, his eyes darting about, Hiratuka tries to follow his gaze, wanting to see just as much as him.

"Well, you're obviously a practitioner of kendo, it's obvious from the smell of sword oils on you. That and you can just tell from a glance the way you grip things that you practice the sword."

Yukinoshita clicks her tongue, giving Hikigaya a point in their little game.

"You live in the rural areas, you drive a truck to work."

"You live in the city. You own a car but someone else drives it."

"You recently gained a new pet. A stray dog."

"You're a cat person. Considering you're so obsessed with appearances and glare at anything that moves."

"From that bias analysis, you must be a dog-person then, unsurprising, you share many traits found in mutts, notice how a dog would retreat with its tail between his legs to protect its genitals, is similar to how distant and asocial persona, hiding your lack of masculinity and social skills by acting superior and far beyond such things. A mangy mongrel."

That wasn't an observation, it was a thinly veiled insult.

Hiratsuka had to stop herself from reacting too much. A hit like that was deserving of an exaggerated "Oh!" like in the old memes.

"It was your mother wasn't it?"

The room just got colder.

Hiratuka looked at Yukinoshita's expression and no longer found lording arrogance, but simply terrifying pensiveness.

While Hachiman's had that, "You just activated my trap card!" look about him.

"Rich girl. Practically a princess. So mommy made you a proper princess, almost moulded you to be one. You don't get a look that cold overnight."

Yukinoshita's eye, for a brief second, flinches.

"You're not the first girl I've met with a silver spoon stuck so far up her ass you can bite werewolves to death."

Fictionally speaking, that was a pretty inventive insult by Hiratuska's standards.

Hikigaya continues to drive his point home. Putting more pressure on Yukinoshita's old wounds.

"Controlling parents, emotionally distant, abusive in everything but the legal definition. I bet they had such high-expectations of you, expectations of perfection. And every flaw, every single mistake, they punished you for it. Hell, I bet you started doing their job for them and hated yourself; your _imperfections_."

Hiratsuka backed away, eying the two, readying herself for a fight or at least a slap.

Hachiman kept probing, unrestrained, feeling an insatiable need to use his skills irresponsibly for once.

"You had thoughts about being free, but deep down, you didn't want it. If you had, you wouldn't be sitting here. Because you were clever, clever enough to know nothing would come out of rebelling, clever enough to know a sheltered girl like you couldn't survive a day without your parent's money."

Yukinoshita looks pensive. Yet, Hiratsuka saw nothing that said she lost. The doctor's chin stayed high, still looking down on everyone here. As though she had something much more powerful in her hand.

Hachiman doesn't notice it, thinking her calmness was speechlessness. Pushing on with his assault.

"And now you're and adult, finally free from the shackles of your last name. Now to cope with the rough childhood of the 1% or following an above average self-worth instilled in you at an early age, you play the healer, saving people, but in reality you simply like the feeling of being superior, of how you're so well put together that you can spare some time for the lowly damaged goods. The expert fisherman teaching the man how to fish to lord his skills over a novice."

Hachiman slowed down, basking in the deconstruction of the well-made image that was Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino.

"Or am I wrong, doctor?" Hikigaya said expecting a reply, or at least some form of denial.

Instead he was met with only silence. The kind right before all hell breaks loose.

The dust hasn't even settled yet when Hiratsuka checks her watch and made an effort to make it look like they were running out of time.

"Can we just get back to the case." she sounded firm, but her words were too weak to penetrate the tension between the two.

"I don't know, Hiratsuka. Can we?" Hikigaya says, his voice sounding course from all his talking.

"Don't get sarcastic with me. It makes your eyes even darker."

"Considering what I'm doing, it wouldn't be surprising my eyes manifest the alignment of the dark subject matter I'm dealing with." Hachiman said, using vocabulary that didn't sound like it was his.

Despite that, Hiratsuka opened her mouth to respond to him.

Yukinoshita beat her to it.

"Unsurprising considering your personal background on the subject."

There was a pause. Hikigaya stared at Yukinoshita.

"Personal background?" he asked.

Hiratsuka wondered as well. As far as she knows, Hikigaya Hachiman has no personal ties to any of the family members affected.

"Your sister, Hikigaya Komachi. Wasn't she also a victim of a serial killer?" Yukinoshita said, taking a sip of her coffee without missing a beat like mentioning a tragedy in Hachiman's life was nothing to her.

Shocked, Hiratsuka checks on Hikigaya. Her only thoughts were of how much of this was true. And how much of this actually explained allot of things.

As Yukinoshita looks straight at him.

Hachiman on the other hand breaks eye contact, his eyes hiding a pained expression, grimacing at the memory. He thought he buried it long ago.

But who can forget their first case?

A fact that Yukinoshita had known from the start. Her victory has always been assured.

Out of now where, Hachiman gets off his chair, the chair nearly toppling over as he pushes it away, before he storms out of the office.

"Excuse me. I'm late for a class." He says courteously while not looking at anyone in the room. "On psychoanalysing."

"Hikigaya. Wait!"

Hachiman already slammed the door before she could even get up from her desk.

Angry, Hiratsuka asks the psychiatrist enjoying her coffee a question that's been on her mind the moment they started talking.

"Was that really necessary doctor?"

She says the word doctor as if she's beginning to doubt my worthiness of that tittle.

To be completely honest?

It wasn't.

None of it was.

But I was curious at what would happen.

How _Hikigaya Hachiman_ would react.

The moment I saw him, all jaded and a haunting look in his eyes, I wanted to know more about him.

I admit, I expected a more violent outburst, yet he surprised me with his restraint.

I have no doubt he wanted to strangle me for even mentioning his sister's name. Traumas such as those tend to turn youths…inclined to violence.

He should be a killer.

But he's not.

He's the opposite.

He turned his pain in to power, motivating him to do a job he seems to blatantly hate. He turned the disdain others had for him as the base to the tools he uses to solve crimes.

How remarkably heroic. It makes me want to eat his heart. Perhaps some of his courage will fill me. But I have enough hearts in my pantry.

"Empathy, Hiratsuka. He has pure empathy."

It's a startling discovery, I've never personally met someone so naturally empathic.

They're have been recorded cases before, of people who can read a person's feelings like they magically appeared in the air. Of individuals who can naturally _understand_ othersbetter than most. A controversial disorder that I have the rare opportunity of studying.

That is, if I can convince Hiratsuka that she needs me. Give me unlimited access to Hachiman.

But first I need to make her understand what Hachiman has. Explain in a way that's so simple, I might even be an expert of it.

"He can walk a mile in anyone's shoes, he's just trained himself to dance in the red shoes of serial killers." Is this admiration I'm feeling? Strange. It's allot less demeaning than what I've been told.

A mind a rare as his should be studied in a university.

Then perhaps dissected?

I wonder which hemisphere is more pronounced.

"For years he's been on the outside, observing people. Never engaging only watching. And all those years of watching, he's learned to read people as a defense mechanism. Eventually it manifests into something more. An empathy if you will."

That brings me to another, more common quirk in his nature.

"Has he ever made large leaps on a single glance or minor detail?"

"A few times, I thought he was just…" Hiratsuka shrugs, no doubt unable to find existing adjectives to describe Hachiman. "Sherlocking it."

"He's more like Harry Dresden in that regard actually."

"Who?"

The lack of culture in this department is almost inspiring. "He senses are just better trained than most, sharpened like a sword, free of the rust that pollutes most of people's."

"An empathy disorder couple with an alarming sensory ability." Hiratsuka concluded, the profile of Hikigaya Hachiman becoming clearer and clearer in her mind.

A mere shadow of his true skills, but an acceptable summary.

"Hachiman has the right mix of inherent traits, psychological trauma, hyper awareness, and a new type of disorder we haven't actually studied about that make him an excellent profiler."

He won the lottery of some sorts, giving all the traits that would be useless if not dangerous on their own, but together form the perfect disorder that allows for highly accurate profiles.

"So in short, he has the tools necessary to catch this killer- any killer for that matter. The perfect profiler."

My, my, such a pragmatic, heartless way of thinking Hiratsuka. Treating poor Hachiman as a tool. How ruthless of you.

It seems it won't be so difficult to convince you.

"This cannibal, you have him searching. I might be able to help Hachiman see his face."

* * *

In a hidden room deep in the secret attic of Yukinoshita's home, a small shrine is there in dedication to the one god- the only god of the samurai of old.

In here, in this dark and dusty place, Yukinoshita's heritage is preserved, a full set of samurai armor and weapons is enshrined, along with the banners and artwork of her family's deep bushido roots.

Yukinoshita kneeled, almost in prayer at the altar of violence. She could be herself here, no eyes to scrutinize her, here she didn't need the mask.

She took a long look at the fierce decorative helmet, the demonic facial plate looking right at her.

Asking permission, Yukinoshita took the wakazashi blade from the stand of the altar, unsheathing it, she begins the ceremonial way of maintaining the blade.

As meticulously as ever, she applies oil to the steel. A ritual preserving the blade's integrity as well as preparing the blade for the abuse to come.

Human blood after all, is very bad for the steel.

* * *

Yukinoshita's disguise was a simple ensemble.

An out of date jacket that was thick enough to hide her petite physique.

A pair of thick glasses to hide her facial shape.

A touch of make-up to add some age.

And a single eye-catching distraction, today it was a large red knit cap that she can discard after.

It was a short walk to the train station, and a shorter walk to the car rental.

She found her target, schoolgirl black haired blue-eyed girl coming out the back entrance of a karaoke bar, an unlit cigarette in her mouth, a lighter her hands.

Yukinoshita's been tailing her for months.

Kishima Kimiko, a popular girl in school that one of her younger patients alluded to as one of the reasons why he became a NEET at such a young age. It was her rejection and continuous bullying that drove her pathetic patient into the life of a hermit.

She's pretty, with her long-midnight black hair and big blue eyes, Yukinoshita can see why her patient confessed to her, and no doubt it was that same attractiveness that allows her to waste her life partying and hanging out with her friends instead of staying in school. The lazy excuse "She can just marry rich." is probably what lets her parents give her so much leeway.

Yuknoshita approaches the girl.

"You shouldn't be smoking at such a young age." Yukinoshita told the girl.

"What are you a doctor?" the girl snaps back, annoyed at having another adult tell her what to do.

"Technically, I am."

"Go eat a dick!" the delinquent lights her cigarette, and proceeds to smoke right in front of Yukinoshita.

"That's very rude." Yukinoshita says.

"What are you going to do about?" she said, blowing smoke in Yukinoshita's face.

Yukinoshita just smiles.

The next morning, police found Kishima Kimiko's dead, naked body mounted on a deer's head in an open field.

The crows were feasting on her corpse, perched on top of her breasts and neck, nipping at the girl's eyes and open wounds.

In the field next to a road, Yukinoshita painted the picture in the hopes Hachiman would like it.

* * *

A murder.

They called me in because a murder occurred in the fields.

A girl matching the profile was found dead, mounted like a table a top the antlers of a trophy stag head.

Hiratsuka's team and I came as soon as we heard.

We weren't the first here though.

A murder of crows got here before us, feasting on top of her, like guests on a dinner table. Enjoying the girl's meat before Nijima shoos them away.

I hear the beating of their wings beating off at the distance. Almost sending me off. Wishing me good luck as I approach another dead girl, the sound of their distant cawing above me makes this all feel so surreal.

"Like I'm dreaming." Or having a nightmare. The same nightmare I had about Kayo.

This looked like an identical copy of it, on the surface, a blue-eyed, black haired girl impaled on antlers. But it felt…worse. More sinister and awful. And that's comparing it to a murder.

I cringe myself back into reality. Details first. I tell myself as always.

Puncture wounds on her chest similar to Takahashi Kayo. Post-mortem.

 _A finishing touch._

The large, almost surgical incisions on her chest cause her death.

 _An organ was removed._

Next I looked at the stag head, the stuffed trophy looks worse for wear, especially the fur on the deer's face.

 _Like it was dipped in blood._

The grass beneath her is of a different color too. Meaning she bled right here.

 _Bled horizontally not vertically_.

Following procedure, with the observations done. I need to cross reference this scene from the one in the Takahashi household.

The obvious one was the state of undress. Kayo Takahashi was fully clothed. This girl was left bare to be shamed and gawked at.

Whoever killed this girl hated her; wanted to humiliate her further, even in death.

The complete opposite of the "tender, love, and kill" mentality I've felt in Kayo's murder.

Then there's the missing organ.

Kayo's liver was taken first then put back in because it wasn't edible.

This girl's lungs were taken first. And nothing else.

This pattern of behavior is inconsistent. To put it in simple terms. "You don't go to another store that has the coffee you're looking for only to buy coke instead."

If a healthy liver was what Kayo's murderer wanted, he could have gotten it off of this girl. And yet, he chose an entirely different organ.

 _In an entirely different way._

Another important difference between the two murders is very subtle, and actually lucky on out part. No one really knew _how_ Kayo was bled, we kept that a secret. I just said she was mounted on antlers. Not hang from them like a pig in a slaughter house.

But there was something else different. Something I don't think I would've caught if I was five years younger.

"Tell me about the stag head."

Instantly, Hiratsuka appeared at my side and held out a copy of a written report. "Stolen. From a hunting club a few miles away."

The killer didn't have antlers of his own. He needed to steal one. And then

Feeling it was safe to be around me, the rest of Hiratsuka's team approached the body.

They approach my field of vision so now I can't help but observe them.

Isshiki was taking pictures, her gender made it her role to be the one taking pictures of this poor girl.

Nishiyama was checking rigor mortis, I watch him and it seems I didn't need to. Most doctors ruin the scene for me, Nishiyama on the other hand seems adamant on becoming unnoticed, treading lightly. It's almost uncomfortable how little he reacts at the sight of this dead girl.

He just looks like he's doing his job, while I'm here almost ready to find a nice safe space and try to forget all this.

But I can't be as bad as a pale faced Nijima, who takes a look at the puncture marks and notice what I want to unnoticed.

"Her lungs were ripped out." Nijima looks sick enough to vomit right then and there. "…while she was still alive."

* * *

And what powerful lungs they were, she screamed and screamed much louder than most but it's not like she's was using them anyway. Dr. Yukinoshita put them to better use.

Kishima's lungs were being pounded hard on the chopping board, Yukinoshita is beating the air out of them with a mallet with a smile on her face, pounding the lungs flat to the sound of Vivaldi's strings.

She dabs her pinky into the raw lung tissue and tastes.

"Smoked."

Clearly, Kishima must've been smoking for almost a year now.

You'd never find such discoloration and bitterness in a non-smoker's lungs.

Cutting the lungs into small but sized pieces, Yukinoshita pours wine on the simmering pan and fries the cut pieces of Kishima's lungs with onions and tomatoes.

* * *

"Where did all his love go?"

I shake my head.

"It's not the same guy."

This was ritualistic torture.

A planned homicide designed to inflict pain and terror to this poor girl for her killer's gratification. He kept her alive, prolonging her suffering that energizes his fantasies of domination and control and escalates the violence with ritualized carnage.

Subjecting this girl to his eroticized anger.

Killing her wasn't what he wanted; hurting her was.

"Whoever killed Kayo killed her mercifully, just a painful thing to get over with quickly so he could get what he really wanted. He loves women. He wants to consume them. Treat them right."

A twisted form of affection and affection is the last thing I feel from this.

"This…" I gesture to the picture of sadism in its purest, cruelest form. "…is just torture. Whoever killed this girl didn't want her dead, he wanted her to scream and cry, hear her beg as he cut her open. The only regret he had was a how quickly she died and he was left with was an unresponsive pile of meat."

I can't believe that just came of my mouth.

I look around, gauging their reactions.

Neither one knew what was going with me, only staring as I start to unravel this case as well as my peace of mind for the next few days.

I can't stand it.

I try to walk away from this, too much is going on and my limit has been reached five minutes ago. My brain feels attacked on two fronts, two different forms of crazy are in my head now. Mixing in a pool around my frontal lobe, inky black crazy soup in the cauldron of my thoughts.

"So think we're dealing with a copycat?" Hiratsuka asked drawing away from the odd sense of murder between my ears.

No, I don't _think_ , I _know_ we're dealing with a copycat. I understand her reluctance to believe that two people in this world could be capable of such horror.

It falls upon me to convince her.

"The one who murdered Kayo only brought her back because he couldn't eat her. The rest- the other girls- he kept." And ingested.

My anger spiked at the sheer psychopathy, I point to a literal monument of sadism in front of me. "This one killed to show off."

"Kayo's killer…" Bled her, but not in her room. "The real killer had a place to bleed her, he has no interest in making a goddamn landmark!"

He has a place to do it. Secluded. Looks normal on the inside and out. It's now coming to me, ideas and answers to those ideas coming right at me, bypassing my brain and heading straight to my mouth.

Like the words of a poet just coming out in a blitz.

"He has a house. Or a-a-a cabin in near woods."

A private place, so she the girls wouldn't be humiliated in public…and one with antlers to mount them on.

"Something with an antler room to hang teenage girls!" This copycat got that wrong, she was vertical when she was bled, and no blood got on the stag's head.

Isshiki pulls out her note pad, wanting to write this all down. I won't slow down, I can't. It's all happening to fast. Like an inspiration you can't force but comes at you like an explosion, taking you far away.

Suddenly, this feels like I'm waking up from this dream, as excruciatingly slow as possible.

When Kayo's body was found, there weren't any reports of stolen stag heads or antler trophies.

The cannibal had to have his own. His own trophies.

" _He took her liver…"_ Nijima's voice echoed in my ears. Then my mind flashes back to some unknown time when I watched a hunting documentary.

The smooth voice of the narrator over the image of a gutted dear's liver sizzling on a fryer.

"… _as per tradition, the liver is eaten first as they decompose faster than…"_

"He's a hunter." Then is dawned on me how difficult it is to profile this person. "With a license. Someone gave him a FREAKING LICENSE!"

Nijima says speaks into his radio. Given the circumstances, he must've been as shocked as I was to hear that the killer might actually be one of the few citizens in Chiba that are armed. And he's quickly warning police that the suspect may be armed and dangerous.

Dangerous enough to pass the rigorous background ground checks and psychological testing to be permitted to own a firearm in Japan.

A person like that is just terrifying.

* * *

Yukinoshita adds red wine to the skillet with fried human lungs. Humming happily when the meat sizzles perfectly.

* * *

And finally it came.

The piece of the frustrating puzzle I needed to complete the face of this cannibal came in the most unlikely of trains of thought.

A subtle inception that was there when I harkened back to my own childhood; when my dad taught both me and my little sister how to shoot a bow.

"He has a daughter."

I've been seeing it the wrong way. Looked at it at only the psychological angle. What I should have asked was "In what way does he love these girls?" The answer was staring me right in the face.

He loved them like a father.

He brought Kayo back in her room because that's how he would want his daughter to be returned.

He's a parent of a teenage girl.

My hands shake as I try to explain everything, "She's the same-same everything. Same height, same weight, same hair color, same eye color, same skin color, SAME CUP SIZE!"

The black hair, blue eyes, skinny and pale image of his little girl. "He loves her but she's leaving, he can't stand the thought of losing her."

Cannibalsim has three different meanings; to eat a person because you no longer think of them as a person like how the Kishima's killer thought of her, to eat your enemy to get their powers and abilities.

Or…

"So he eats her- them. He eats these girls- girls-girls that look like his daughter…so-so so a part of them…her will stay with him. THAT'S how he honors these girls."

Dr. Yukinoshita was right, there is a thrill when you get this right. To succeed in something almost impossible. I feel like Archimedes running through the streets of Syracuse screaming "Eureka!" after he discovered the principles of water displacement.

I'd do the same thing if my stamina wasn't punched out of me. I can barely stand around here let alone celebrate.

My head can't take any more of this.

So many answers.

Too many.

Too much madness in one spot, they all want to go into my head. Tentacle raping its way into my psyche and defiling every sense of right and wrong my mind has ever made.

It's too much.

"His daughter's his special girl." I say quietly before saying. "I'm leaving."

I just walked away, ignoring the surprise looks of the other police officers expecting me to pull another deduction straight out of my mind's ass.

"What about the copycat?"

I stop.

And turn.

Then stare at Hiratsuka.

This _copycat._ It's a monster wearing a suit that makes him look human, a sick creature capable of human speech but not human emotion.

The nurses around it the day it came to earth probably thought it was cute, they should have dropped it on the ground before it grew up and learned to blend in with the normal people he'll treat as lambs to be silenced and slaughtered.

But if Hiratsuka wants a profile I'll give her a profile. It's the only reason she wants me around anyway.

"An intelligent psychopath." He's smart enough to not leave evidence but also smart enough to leave the right evidence. There's not even enough here for me to empathize with.

"A genius level intellect."

Whoever he is, he must be laughing that the only description I can give is a compliment.

"A pure sadist. No empathy."

I guess to a guy who can carve up a human being like she was a Christmas turkey, those were compliments. The incisions were flawless, surgical and she was alive while he did it. She struggled for her life as he ended it.

"He's killed before, in different ways, and he may never kill this way again." A completely heartless individual who wants nothing more than to dominate and conquer.

Which reminds me.

"Have Dr. Yukinoshita write up a background report." I casually say as I maneuver around the yellow tape. Pushing my responsibilities on other people is a bad habit I've tried to shake in the past so I'm more than comfortable with doing it again in the present.

"You seem to love her opinion."

All I want to do is find a bed, lay on it, scream at my pillow, read something funny online, and fall asleep and wake up when this is all over. That would be my perfect night and I deserve it after all this.

* * *

Back in Chiba, Yukinoshita was already living her version of a perfect evening.

A gourmet meal cooked to perfection paired with some vintage wine and the music of Chopin to set the dining mood, she digs into her dish and almost feels guilty.

It was almost decadent to have a culinary master piece two nights in a row.

She tastes her meal, and approves, despite the suddenness the dish more than reaches her expectations. Say what you will about smokers, their bitter lungs almost always give the best gamey-charcoal grilled taste that just sends a warm feeling in your stomach.

With wine in hand, she thinks about Hikigaya Hachiman and wonders if he enjoyed the work she left for him in the field as much as she enjoyed making it

She'll have to pay him a visit.

Food this good is wasted when only eaten alone, after all.

* * *

The knocking in my motel room woke me up from my prolonged sleep, I was beyond exhausted yesterday, I didn't even unpack, I just fell down on my bed and closed my eyes until sleep found me. It didn't take long to fall asleep.

My head hurts from all twelve hours of sleep, the blood pooling in my head from laying down to long making my head feel heavy and full.

I opened the door, and I see Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino. Looking hauntingly beautiful and intimidating in a different suit, a casual brown office attire CEO's wear when doing work out of the office.

In her hands was a metallic bento, the new kind with advanced heating and insulation that was big enough to fit a meal for two.

"Good morning." She says, brighter than the tone I got from her the other day.

"Good morning." I politely parrot back, I didn't even know it was still morning, it felt like afternoon actually and I overslept but I guess when you sleep at seven, every morning feels like you overslept.

"I made us breakfast." She said and pushed her bento towards me. "May I come in?"

This is a first. A pretty girl has never made me breakfast before.

I look around, checking behind her for Hiratsuka. This could be just another test to profile me, Hiratsuka could be hiding somewhere to see how I would react to a honey-trap.

I couldn't find her lurking around, so she wasn't there.

Believe me, if she was, I'd know.

"Where's Hiratsuka?"

"She found a lead pertaining to the cause of the security leak, she'll be deposed for the entire day. Today's adventure will be yours and mine." She sounds a little too excited, like a rookie cop eager for his first beat. Then I remembered that she's a civilian, this might actually be her first experience doing an investigation, so of course she's excited.

"May I come in?" she asks again, looking at me hopefully with her bento boxes.

My stomach goes crazy over the thought of food. I step aside, letting her in.

Before I close the door, I take another look outside.

Nope. Still no sign of Hiratsuka.

Yukinoshita takes over the small table in the kitchenette, asking me to seat before gracefully setting the bento compartments and utensils on the small table like a dance before the grand finale of opening the lid to reveal what's inside.

"There's no better way to start the day than a nice protein scramble of eggs and sausage. I hope you'll like it."

By the old Shinto gods and the new fictional ones, a home-cooked breakfast. It smells like a school day and mom just made breakfast and started calling me from the kitchen to hurry up before I'm late for school. My brain was too overwhelmed by the sensory information, so my single-male senses moved my mouth for me.

"I might actually fall in love with you." I said suddenly, which I quickly regretted.

"That was out loud." Yukinoshita said, seating herself down.

 _At least sound embarrass with me, woman!_

"My apologies." I say hastily before saying thanks for the meal.

The eggs tasted like heaven, or at least the kind of heaven you can find at restaurants with a well-dressed wait staff.

Yukinoshita watches me, her chopsticks idle.

She must be expecting me to compliment her meal, a meal this well-cooked deserves praise and she knows it.

"This is good." I say with some egg still in my mouth.

I hear her give let out the smallest of a huff of pride. "I'm glad you like it." she says as her mouth forms a warm smile.

Which oddly enough, it reminds me of an old global warming documentary. No clue why.

She then took to her meal. Eating it gracefully as if she rehearsed it several times under strict supervision; her mother's most likely.

It's none of my business, I just eat.

I missed this; a home cooked meal, sitting down and eating a meal with someone. I can't even remember the last time I had a good meal, let alone with a woman my age.

"I hope this means we can look past our little squabble in Hiratsuka's office."

Is that what you called it? Doesn't matter. I've completely forgotten all about that along with any romantic interest in you.

"Let's just be professional." I leave it at that.

A moment of quiet eating passes before Yukinoshita stops and says. "I heard you made a breakthrough on Kishima Kimiko."

"Huh?"

Who the hell's Kishiman Kimiko?

I choke on my egg and had to wash it down with some coffee. Black caffeine floods the eggs down my throat before I die of asphyxiation.

"That's not really a good topic conversation over breakfast." I told her, the murdered girl having a name still processing in my mind. A name for a picture.

Yukinoshita's face seemed to be devoid of a response to what I was saying. "I don't think so" she says, a piece of sausage disappearing into her mouth right after.

Almost choking on them, the eggs don't appeal to me anymore, so I try the little bits of sausage.

"Mmm!" On the first bite the umami hit me like a bolt of lightning, she must've put allot of work on them, the flavour is so unique, so refreshingly addicting, I can't even tell what meat this is.

I see Yukinoshita smiling.

"I heard from Hiratsuka you might be dealing with a copycat. That you reacted violently to the crime scene. Tell me about it."

Figures a psychiatrist would be interested in mental breakdowns.

You'd react the same way too if you saw a teenage girl's tortured body mounted on a stag's head. If she's so interested in the topic, I might as well humor her and talk about it.

"Every crime scene fits a purpose and that crime scene… It wasn't just a copycat imitating what happened to Takashi Kayo. It was like…"

Like Kishima's killer knows more about Kayo's killer better than I did.

"Like what Hikigaya?"

"Like it was gift wrapped." For me specifically, taunting me, telling me the details I may have missed. "The copycat showed me a negative to get a clearer positive."

"Aiding you?"

"Exactly!" the copycat killer was helping me, and murdered Kishima Kimiko to do it. He's mocking me and helping me at the same time, that kind of behavior...It's an entirely psychopathic way of being _un_ psychopathic. If you can understand what that means.

Yukinoshita hums, I can't confidently say she sounds impressed with me but my...ego I guess just can't rule it out.

Then it hit me, I must be trying to impress her. Oh, shit.

"Let's get back to the cannibal your chasing." she says "Let's not forget who our top priority is here."

She's right. As much as I hate to say it, she's...not wrong. Kimiko's death was awful, but we have no leads, no evidence, and nothing we can use to catch her murderer and we know he won't kill the same way again. Daddy Cannibal on the other hand is just about ready to kill again. It's Wednesday today and Friday's when he'll strike. We're on a race against my favorite day of the week to find this killer before he takes another girl.

It's awful, I know. But I'd rather catch one killer on the loose than none.

Or at least that's what I tell myself to get in the mood for this, crap.

"I've given Hiratsuka the new profile."

"Yes, I read the chicken scratch summarizing your Eureka moment."

Did she? Read Iroha's handwriting I mean. That girl writes like she's a doctor who dislocated her thumbs and writing a prescription. Wonder how that played out.

"To profile an offender, one must follow five steps. Currently, we're on the fourth; considering other possible motives. Have you been looking into his mind, Hikigaya? Reconstructing his fantasies. His impulses. Or have you gotten deep enough to learn his inner problems?"

Yeah I know how to do my job, the hard part was _not_ learning his problems. There's just somethings too foul to be learned.

"Other than the sublimating wanting to have sex with his daughter by killing and eating other girls who look like her, he's got a few problems not even you can troubleshoot." I think I may have offended her, either my crass language or the fact that I may have doubted her abilities as a psychiatrist.

I go with the latter. Positive thoughts.

"Do you have any problems, Hikigaya?" she asked again in a tone that I'll now refer to as her "Psychiatrist Voice."

"Nope. None. What makes you say that I have problems?" I deflect her attempts at probing into my mind. "Is it the eyes?" Yukinoshita forces a smile, apparently that's how she responds to childish jokes. Maybe I'll try sock puppets next, then she'd have to laugh.

"Of course you don't. You and I are just alike. Problem free. Nothing about us to feel horrible about." then she says. "Do you know what I think?"

"What?"

She leans in just like a high schooler would when telling secrets and exchanging gossip. "I think Hiratsuka sees you as her silver bullet used for only the monsters that bump in the night."

I blink. Then burst in laughter.

Yukinoshita looks like she just lost her appetite. "Did anyone ever tell you have an uncivilized laugh?"

"Yes. Every time." It's partly the reason I laugh less and less these days. When I finally get myself under control, I bluntly ask her. "What do _you_ see me as, doctor?"

Without even batting an eye, her response was immediate. "The bat that flies in the night devouring mosquitoes that carry disease."

"Something good that is mistaken as evil?" Is what I was trying to get from that. Bats do more good than most people think, yet people hate them for their looks. I can understand the symbolism.

Yukinoshita doesn't see it that way from how she shakes her head slightly.

"No. You're both ugly. You just don't have rabies yet."

Suddenly, the world just seemed cold. The food didn't taste all that great. And my head's debating whether or not that was an insult.

I stare at her and wonder what's inside that head of hers. What makes her see the world as she does? Or if she even sees the world. She's a psychologist, which explains allot. There's an old joke I remember back in college. "What's the difference between a psychologist and a coal miner? The psychologist goes down deeper and comes up dirtier."

It makes me wonder just how deep she went down…

"Finish your breakfast." She tells me in a calm voice that shouldn't be unsettling. Perhaps it was just the timing of when she said it and that's why I jumped at the sound.

I resume eating, remembering how badly the last time I looked into a woman's head ended for me.

* * *

I got inside my Toyota pick-up truck, I would've preferred taking the train but during investigations where you might have to go to multiple destinations having a car is better than relying on public transport.

That and there's always the unlikely possibility to go on a high-speed chase like in the movies.

Usually I'd be excited with a long drive. But with Yukinoshita tagging along, I feel self-conscious about my driving. And my car. And my body odor. And even my seat cushions. Being in a car with a woman my age doesn't happen to me as often as I would admit. The last time was when I was twenty and a fellow student needed a ride to school. It ended with her boyfriend greeting her. And me alone contemplating death.

I put on my seat belt when I notice Yukinoshita, she's a look on her face ever since I told her where we'd be going. Like a cat has when you first offer it food.

"What is it?" I ask her now before it drives me crazy guessing.

"I was always curious of how the police did their work, I feel privileged to be seen a glimpse of what happens behind a curtain. I've been behind many you see, school events, stage musicals, studio band, I've seen all the tricks behind the magic, but never an investigation. I only ever see the news reports. Never the operation."

I keep forgetting she's a civilian. This must be a completely new experience for her. She mustn't get much excitement in her office, after all. Somehow that just makes me feel responsible for her, a babysitter almost. If she wasn't made of solid, jagged ice underneath, I might even be protective of her.

"Don't expect any excitement." I tell her before her hopes are up and she's disappointed with what police work is when there's no camera.

"We're just following up on a lead on a case. The results got back from the metal scrapings." I start the ignition, my truck springs to life, never disappointing me.

"Leads back to a construction site near to where the third and sixth victims were presumed taken."

I see her subtly shake her head as I check my mirrors, apparently, she's not convinced.

"Something wrong?"

"There could be hundreds of construction sites. The probability of a single metal scrap leading to a specific site is improbable." she said like any logical person would.

I said the same thing once when I was just starting out, my partner, who was more of a mentor really, probably felt like I do right now. I need to dispel something first, I might not be police anymore, I still have the obligation to teach people about the unsung heroes of the forensics lab.

"Not when you know that the scraps are from a new type of pipe manufactured by Nippon Steel that can only be cut using heavy equipment, and they've happily gave us a list of shipping orders, and one of which leads to the construction site near Asuka Mirai Highschool."

That's right. The crime lab! The only decent organization in the police force. Unbiased scientists who actually want to find the real culprit with hard evidence, instead of police officers who pin the crime on the most _likely_ suspect and keep them in a room under duress unless they sign a written confession.

Sorry for ranting, I just had to say it.

"I had no idea that criminal investigations deal with circumstantial evidence akin to guess work."

Something about that hit a nerve in my detective brain, my synapses already firing off a response.

"I don't guess. I never guess."If I can't prove anything with facts, I don't mention it. I don't follow a lead when I know it doesn't have the evidence to back it up. "But you won't believe how many crimes can be solved by something as simple as piece of steel."

Even I admit that not even science is an absolute science. Most of what I do is strives towards scientific truth, but ironically scientific truth is ever changing, it's incorrect sometimes, and changes with every new discovery. I can be wrong and it's a good thing. So we can learn more. Because science is a guide to understanding. A guide can be wrong sometimes and can lead you astray, but it's there so you don't have to start from square one, you've got something to help you.

So, you can say I may sound biased with the forensic labs. The truth is they can be wrong sometimes. And sometimes, the police officers can make right calls. It's the over reliance on either one I can't stand.

Instinct and Evidence.

Experience and Knowledge.

That's what I've honed. And that's what I believe in; my skills.

"The science can be wrong. Evidence can ruin the truth and vice versa." I told her. "But my former partner- the man who taught me how to be a detective- always said, to listen to your gut when the evidence isn't enough, because instinct has had forty-five million years of trial and error." I told her, the first person I may have ever told what is essential a trade secret. "And to trust the evidence- the science we developed- when your gut isn't talking."

"And what does your gut say?"

Honestly?

"That I should play music. It's a long drive."

I sync up my phone to the car's stereo system, I scroll through my lists and looked for the least embarrassing one. I'm at the T's when Yukinohita's open hand comes into view.

"Shall I pick?" she says ever so politely. I oblige her request and hand the phone over to her.

I nervously watch her scroll my phone, hoping she wouldn't comment on all the AKB-48 songs.

But it didn't come to that, I see her eyes light up and she immediately presses play.

The first second of music was unmistakable. I sat idly as I listen to the piece. Listening in anticipation as the innocent start of the song's first minute ends and suddenly- almost violently- transforms into a dark, terrifying horror that begins with a powerful blowing of brass. As always, the music sends chills across my body.

You've got to hand it to Tchaikovsky, even without the ballet, _Dance of the Swans_ can still make you feel something. Awaken a part inside me that craves for a terror that only a few notes can unleash.

At the two minute mark, Yukinoshita speaks. "I didn't expect you to enjoy classical music."

She timed that. And the music hit me. Hit me in a way that my soul felt it. Her voice adding another layer to it that just somehow fits.

I nod, smiling uncontrollably.

Most people think it's pretentious to enjoy it, openly mocking people who enjoy them. The rest just like to feel superior, constantly showing off how cultured they are by saying they listen to this composer and that sonata when in actuality they've only listened to them from anime like Your Lie in April or something.

"A person's taste in music determines how well they really understand the art." That's wrong, I should have said was "Music is for everyone, not just one type of music for one type of person." Too late, no use regretting something I already said.

"I like it. And that's all that really matters."

Yukinoshita leans back on her chair, watching me with those eyes of hers as though I might do something to amuse her.

"You're full of surprises, Hikigaya."

Stop blushing and drive you idiot.

* * *

Yukinoshita smiles as the song continuous and the car was moving. It was a good thing Hachiman had this on his phone. The song's been stuck in her head ever since she played it over Kimiko's screaming.

End of Chapter.

* * *

 **AN: I won't give any excuses. Something happened to me and my family and I don't think is the right place to share so I apologize for the delay. Just know that this story is still alive. I'll try harder to update more but my writing has suffered. Review if you've noticed.**


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Ending of the Case Is As Fucked Up As Expected

I feel a twinge of dread jostling in my gut when Yukinoshita and I arrive at the construction site.

Not as bad as a fresh crime scene, those tend to make my bowels vibrate and my palms sweaty, and only slightly worse than going to a party you when you could be at home.

Maybe it was the noise. So much happens in a construction site. Bosses barking orders. Steel hitting steel. And that overpowering hum of heavy machinery.

Loud noises aren't good for me. My medical tests back in the US told me that I might have more sensitive hearing than most people. Instead of a good thing as you'd expect, it just means I'm less tolerant to loud and sudden noise. My doctor advised me to avoid concerts and to always wear proper hearing protection when practicing my firearm since I could have a panic attack.

Just so you know, I've never once had a panic attack… at least not one caused by noise.

I take in a long breath of cold, cement mixed air as I look at the macho men at work.

 _So many orange hard hats and reflective vest._

The killer could have been here. Somewhere. Holding a heavy construction tool he could use to deconstruct my brain into a red Jell-O.

It almost makes me wish I had my gun on me.

Almost.

We're not here to interview workers, because chances are he's not even here anymore. The headline got traction, newspapers and major news networks have been running it ever since.

 _Serial killers sell. Fear is a great way to make money. Just ask the major news networks._

If he's as smart as I know he is. He won't be here. It's the hunter instinct in him that keeps him from staying too long in one place.

I'm confident we won't run into him.

Totally, don't need a gun. Nope.

We head for the administrative building where the manager and bookkeeping staff work, it was a small solidly built two-storey wooden rectangle with a door and windows, unpainted and easily demolished when the job would be done. I walked up the external flight of stairs to the door and enter without knocking. The lady in the front desk was on the phone, she had black hair in a style I've seen on most Korean women north of the border, she's smaller than me and ten to fifteen kilograms heavier.

She regarded me with a look of apathy I often get from most women that don't know me but nowhere near as powerful from the women who do.

But when she got a good look of Yukinoshita, I see the change in her eyes.

Yukinoshita looked like a goddess and she knows it. Insecurity hits her hard. I see it in the way she straightens herself, how she jerks around and tries to look presentable, her fingers instantly straightening her clothes, making herself look neat. Then a smile she didn't give me she flashes for Yukinoshita, trying to look inviting.

She must think Yukinoshita's her boss. I can't blame her, in a five figure outfit like hers, Yukinoshita looks like _everyone's_ boss.

"Ma'am were with the police." I told her dispelling any misconceptions. I flash her a little plastic card with my name on it, a small piece of identification with the symbol of the National Police Agency that gets me into police buildings and pass police yellow tape, courtesy of Hiratsuka.

"We'd like all your resignation letters in the past week." I asked her, she looks at me, a split second of panic and paranoia manifests on her face.

It's a natural thing. Police scare innocent people as much as criminals. It's human nature to fear the sudden presence of authority crushing your freedom.

 _Cue drone strikes._

The secretary puts a hand over her phone's receiver. "Oh? What for?" she asked. And I debated internally if I should tell her.

"We're after a serial killer." Yukinoshita answers before I could make up an excuse.

The secretary takes her hand off her phone. "I'll have to call you back." she told the person on the other end before hanging up.

I sometimes underestimate the amount of files that comes with a business.

To put it into context, just the resignation letters alone would have enough paper to print a new text book for each of my twenty-five students. If the construction company wasn't so organized, we'd be looking through every file labelled EMPLOYEE for days.

We scanned through several boxes of resignations. We sorted them out by date. Looking for the specific resignation that fits in our suspect with the same timeline.

Out of the hundreds of workers, one name stuck out the most.

 **Tatsumi Tsurumi .**

 **Plumber. Pipe Threader.**

"Do you have anything more on this plumber?" I show the secretary the letter in question.

The secretary shakes her head. "We don't ask too many questions when hiring freelance, but we do check criminal records-"

"And he doesn't have one." I finished for her.

The killer wouldn't have a criminal record. He'd look like a sane, everyman that just _seems_ a little off. Like a wolf wearing people's clothing.

"Does he have a daughter by any chance?" I ask the golden question. And the secretary shakes her head then as if realizing a mistake shrugs instead of committing to the clear "no".

"I don't know. Maybe? There's plenty of workers here. Some have daughters that bring them lunches, a few even have ones working down in bookkeeping."

Right. Too vague.

"She'd be around sixteen. Blue eyes. Black hair. Milk pale skin. Skinny like a stick but pretty in a _cool beauty_ sort of way." I gesture behind me where Yukinoshita was working. "Like Yukinoshita over there."

No idea why I mentioned Yukinoshita as a frame of reference. Maybe I just wanted to compliment her without being to direct.

 _Damn, first the sudden confession now this stealth compliment. Seems my pants are doing the talking today._

"What makes…Tatsumi Tsurumi so suspicious?" Yukinoshita asks as she walked over to me and took a peak at the resignation form over my shoulder.

Usually I'd shudder at the subtle invasion of privacy because it's usually unintentional and I've learned to accept that not everyone understands or has the same level of personal space, but this woman was completely aware of my discomfort. Acting on it would simply prove her right on the matter of my personal space.

Being so close, I couldn't help but take a whiff of her, she smells expensive, the beeswax mixed in with a hint of rich body wash and perfume I can never afford. Just her smell makes me feel guilty. Far below her station. A street urchin gazing upon an empress.

"Nothing." I quickly tell her without looking at her directly, just peaking at her general direction, catching glimpses of her hair. "Just the fact that he didn't write down his address. Only his name and phone number."

It was a small insignificant fact. But being a detective for so long, you'll never know which insignificant fact solves a case. Source: Not Me.

"And that makes him a suspect?" Yukinoshita asks skeptically.

"It shouldn't. But he wrote it down with a glitter pen." It was the kind of stationary teenage girls carry, the novelty item that makes boring ink shine sparkle in just the right light.

A detail that's way too suspicious, given the context of the suspect's profile.

"So you're basing this purely off ink?"

"No." At least not legally. What would people say if I did? I can already hear the lawyer trying to breed skepticism in the jury, making me out as a delusional, overworked professor looking for a way back in the police force.

I look at the paper again, putting more effort into my observation. You never know what you might find on a second look.

It pays off. "Read the date." I told her. She leans down to read the paper, the ends of her black hair brushing against my skin, sending nerves a flutter close to being tickled.

Her voice brings me out of the delusion. "Tuesday. The day after the profile was released." Her voice held it, the tone of voice I love to hear when I'm in an investigation, she sees the dots align. The insignificant details slowly leading to something of significance.

I scan the other resignations. "Everyone else quit on or after a Saturday. Payday."

"Why would he loose a few days of pay to leave earlier?"

"He's not the only to quit on Tuesday."

"But he's the only _pipe threader_ who quit on Tuesday _."_

"Hmm…" Yukinoshita hums at my rhetorical. I can't help but imagine if I can make her let out other noises.

 _Oh hell yeah I've thought about it. Sue me._

"Do you suspect Mr. Tsurumi of being the killer?" she asked looking right at me.

No, at least not entirely. This is a huge jump, the kind I frown on making, he could have many reasons for leaving. But…

"It warrants for a visit don't you think?"

Yukinoshita pauses a bit, crossing her arms and bringing one hand neatly over her chin in thought.

A habit of intellect, I guess. All us smart people have them. Like, totally.

"Should we inform Commissioner Hiratsuka?" she asked after much thought.

I thought about it. Hiratsuka didn't expect me to find anything of significance. Chances are this leads to nothing. By telling Hiratsuka, however, I could put cops in a nice family's house. That's an image you don't want to associate yourself with. Housewives gossip, and a police car parked outside someone's house can fuel allot of it. I want to keep the Tsurumi family's image relatively blemish free so I should just play this by the ear.

"No. We'll just be performing a home interview."

I feel like rookie all over again, performing home interviews. I might as well entertain Yukinoshita with it, it would be a shame if her first time on a case would be a paper work run.

"Let's get the papers loaded in the car for processing and we can go." No need to drop it off at the precinct, they'll be safe in the back seat.

* * *

As I watch Hachiman store another box of files into his car, I find myself, rather disappointed in what I assume would be thrilling look into Hachiman's thought process.

And I abhor such dull events, for my mind should always be stimulated, yet through all the rumors and intellectual discussions circulating around Hachiman's famed profiling I'm still unconvinced, or to be more precise, _anticipating_ a show of his truest abilities.

Why, you might ask? That I grow close to such skill when those very abilities might one day be used against me one day.

Perhaps it's to prepare for such an event. To gauge the limits of his abilities. " _To know thy enemy"_ as military historians say.

Rationally, that is my best answer. But if we were to fall into the realm of law and order, of morals and justice, you could even say I feel obligated to aid the police.

As a woman with black hair and blue eyes, it serves my best interests to apprehend this selective killer and to do right by those poor, unfortunate, girls whose deaths were brought on solely for their appearance.

Call it a matter of principle, if you will. As a woman, it's an injustice to be judged on our looks alone.

Or perhaps I'm simply curious as to what would happen.

Which leads me to this course of action. If Hachiman won't entertain me, perhaps I'll make my own entertainment.

I pick up the last box of resignation letters, and carry them only making it through the door before I suddenly feel my hands become slippery.

 _Oops._

I drop the heavy pile of files. Sheets of white spread across the ground, brown files open and release more white all over the ground.

"I'm so sorry." I say with a few octaves higher, as high as it was when I was in high school, and it put the desired affect into Hachiman's male brain.

My voice acting lessons pay-off as I hear Hachiman from the car.

Being the gallant gentleman, Hachiman stops what he was doing and comes to my aid. Picking up the papers that I dropped.

"It's fine. I'll handle it." he says like a chivalrous knight and makes the fair maiden in me smirk.

The obnoxious secretary joins in. Either to curry our favor or to speed up our departure from her place of work.

While they're busy cleaning up my mess, I make my way back into the office where the phone is.

With a tissue I grab the phone and dial in the number on Mr. Tsurumi's resignation letter with my knuckle.

The phone rings for a while…

" **Hello?"** a young woman's voice answers. From her voice, she'd be around her teens. Perhaps this is the daughter that inspired so many deaths?

His little muse of murder?

 _Hmm, I should write that one down_

"May I speak with Mr. Tsurumi, please?" I ask politely, altering my voice slightly, enough that it isn't similar to my speaking voice while still average enough to sound natural.

After a rustle, I hear it. **"Oh…Dad it's for you."**

So she is the daughter. Oh my. This home interview is starting to become an exciting prospect.

I hear the passing of the phone. I almost hold my breath for the sound of Mr. Tsurumi's voice.

" **Hello?"**

"Is this Mr. Tsurumi?" I asked.

" **Yes, this is Tsurumi Tatsumi. Who's speaking?"**

Finally. A voice to add to the profile.

A soft, timid timber of his voice perfectly masking the ravenous hunger deep within. From his choice of words alone I can tell right away that he's an educated man, but the subtle meekness in his voice tells of an introverted soul longing to roar and devour.

I feel like rejoicing, for it is a rare thing to hear the voice of someone who shares the same niche tastes as yourself.

* * *

When the phone rang, Tsurumi Tatsumi was enjoying his little piece of heaven; an afternoon cooking with his two favorite girls.

Tatsumi isn't some corporate slave hunched over in some cubicle waiting for the workday to end to plug himself out of the system just to be trapped by it again the next day. No, Tsurumi Tatsumi actively fights the fast-paced, corporate world of Japan by simply being simple.

He's a simple man who enjoys simple things. Being from a fairly wealthy family, he could've studied at any university he wanted and gotten a job at a corporation pushing pencils and bowing his head at the higher-ups. Instead, he works with his hands, going to a vocational school and being a jack-of-all-construction-trades.

He built his home himself, the small haven from the urban clamor of Chiba and closer to the outdoors. And closer with his family. His wife Reiko shared his love for nature, and so did their daughter Rumi.

His two favorite girls. His greatest loves.

They were once described as the commercial family, a family so perfect that they might as well be advertising cereal or noodles. As if the never argued or shouted at the table. They weren't perfect. Just average.

But it was moments like these, cooking together, reconnecting with each other that made average feel perfect.

As the sausages where nearly done, and the pancake version of egg's in a basket where just about ready, the phone rang, it's ringing ruining the pleasant sound of sizzling and splatter of hot oil.

Rumi, being the closest to the phone, answers it. A second later she tells her father.

"Dad. It's for you."

Tatsumi took the phone, while his attention was on mostly on the sausages that were just about ready. He lazily presses it between his head and shoulder.

"Hello."

" **Is this Mr. Tsurumi?"**

That question shouldn't scare him. But it did. Tatsumi felt it like an accusation, like his own name was a curse or insult _. It shouldn't_ he told himself. _Relax._

It was the voice, it was one he didn't recognize and there's something about your name in all its special, personal, intimacy when said to you in full that can render a man fearing something.

"Yes, this is Tsurumi Tatsumi." he said and found some ground back under his feet.

Then nothing. Only phone static.

Tatsumi found himself twitching in nervous impatience for the reply.

" **Good."**

The next minutes became a blur. Just rapid heartbeats and ragged breathing; a chase. Something Tatsumi knows allot about.

" **Listen closely."** The voice on the other end told him.

Tatsumi just nodded.

" **Consider this a courtesy call. We've never met, nor do I suspect we shall ever meet."**

Tatsumi Rumi was a hunter. A predator. He stalks his prey, patiently and stealthily. Like a wolf in the forest stalking and chasing down dear, he's the apex predator.

He should fear nothing.

But right now, hearing the voice on the other end. A chill the size of a winter ran into his spin. Making his blood run cold. Something dark and foreboding was coming, his instincts could sense it.

As if he was the deer and something else was in his forest.

Something out there prowling.

Something sinister.

" **Are you listening?"**

"Yes." And so Tatsumi listened to God-his new one at least, hoping for mercy and fearing the fires of judgement.

" **They know. And they are coming."**

At that moment. Tsurumi's world became dark. Empty. Ugly.

…And very, very, cold. As cold as the voice he was speaking to. He felt icy hands pierce his soul and turned his blood blue with frost.

" **Do you understand?"**

With his mind racing a million meters a second, Tatsumi could barely utter a reply. "Yes."

And the phone goes dead.

Tatsumi stood there with a phone in one hand and a knife in the other.

* * *

The drive to the Tsurumi house was quiet and Yukinoshita and I were both comfortable with it. Relishing it in fact.

I checked on her a few times on the way, and she looked completely relaxed and so was I.

Apparently, Yukinoshita and I share the same trait wherein we could both say or do nothing to each other and not find it awkward.

Call it lack of social skills but for me, nothing's better than quiet and long drive.

It was a little over five when we arrived at the Tsurumi's neighborhood. A suburban piece of prime real-estate that used to be forest land. I drive by big houses with fairly large lawn space. Each house was two lots apart from each other, each with a different design in mind, giving it the benefit of not having the _assembly-line-home_ feel like the neighborhood I grew up in.

Ever since the population boom a few years back, there's been a demand in houses far away from urban areas. A place you could raise a family of more than four per government… _incentives_.

Pretty soon, they might even reach all the way to my little house in the woods.

I shudder at the thought.

Following the address, I came by a secluded house that could have been on the cover of a home owner's magazine. The lawn was mowed perfectly with bushes of exotic looking flowers lining the walls protected by a tall picket fence that was tastefully varnished wood instead of the typical white, the coal black car parked in the drive way told me that the family was in, it was a pickup truck just like mine, but it was the outdoorsman variety judging from the mud and vegetation on the wheels and bumper.

The house itself looked like it was built from scratch. While the house I grew up in was just one from an assembly line of houses, the Tsurumi home looked designed, built by a craftsman and not a foreman.

I didn't study architecture, nor will I ever, but even from a glance I could tell this house was unique. From the strong earthly colors, to the fancy looking chimney peeking at the top.

This isn't a typical Japanese home. More European actually. Perhaps German judging from how solid it all looks.

I've heard of Chinese tourists being able to replicate the buildings they visited on vacation.

Don't know why I mentioned that, but it was a completely useless fact that suddenly appeared in my head. Anyway, this is dream home. Built with love and care. A dream house that took years of love- genuine familial love to make this place into a beautiful home.

 _Tsurumi might not be the killer after all._ I thought, feeling really stupid driving all the way here.

Then I hear a scream.

The door opens and a plump woman steps out, scarlet red flowing from her neck, getting all over her yellow apron and grey turtle neck.

She screams a hauntingly guttural note that dies in her throat as blood starts to go into her lungs. She falls to the pavement of the walkway.

She screams again, a cry for help all human beings are programmed to respond to. I see the door open and catch a glimpse of a man with a knife.

Our eyes meet and I know him.

We've never met before but I know him.

I see it in the look in his eyes. Eyes are said to be windows to the soul. I didn't see his soul but I saw how well he aligns. He aligns himself with the image of the profile I've made perfectly.

He's the one I've been getting to know. The owner of the head I've been trying to get inside. The madness of pedophilic, incestuous, spirit of cannibalism that has terrorized Chiba and has left his bloody finger prints all over the spaces of my mind.

He's the cannibal killer.

Tatsumi Tsurumi is the cannibal killer.

He retreats into the house, like a startled monster retreating back into his cave.

My first instinct was to run after him, my training told me to go to the woman bleeding on the ground.

"Stay in the car," I told Yukinoshita.

I got out of the car and came by Mrs. Tsurumi's side, crouching. Blood was everywhere. Covering the ground. The smell of human blood is nauseating in large amounts, explaining why I feel like throwing up.

I put pressure on the wound. My palms on the cut in her neck.

It was me against a leak of red. And the leak was winning.

I try to say something. Something to calm her down, and it just came out as a whisper. Like I was soothing her.

Her eyes locked with mine, then drifted slowly beyond me.

And then her eyes lost their light.

I saw a human being. A wife. A mother. Someone's daughter at one time. She was full of life once.

Now her life was soaking the ground four feet from her home. A step away from being another corpse I'd have examined.

She died. She stopped being a human being.

It was another dead body sprawled in front of me. Out of instinct, my mind goes through its motions, she was no longer a woman I wanted to save but a victim I needed to study. My brain does what I've trained it to do; analyzing the crime scene but with the cheat of being a witness.

And I came to one conclusion.

 _Her injuries_. I noted. _She didn't get them from defending herself. The angles were too wrong._

She received these wounds from protecting someone else.

"The daughter!"

I look to the door, and I hear it the scream that awakens all my chauvinistic, male dominated, white knight instincts; the scream of a helpless girl, right behind that door.

A teenage girl was in danger.

With a shaky, bloody hand I reach for my gun. Only to find nothing there.

That's when my situation dawned on me.

No gun. No backup. No partner. If I went in there I'd be killed. If I didn't, a teenage girl gets killed by her own father and God knows what else might be done to her.

I don't know what to do. There I said it!

I've been trained for these situations. _Trained_!

Years of Judo. Courses of Krav Maga. A few boxing lessons. The countless times I've had to defend myself against bullies.

Even with all that, I can't decide whether I should go in there. There's too many possibilities. Too many variables.

He could be laying a trap for me.

He could have a gun.

The daughter could already be dead.

There's just too many things I haven't taken into account. Me, the daughter, and even Yukinoshita could all loose our lives if I make the wrong decision.

From the house I could hear a young girl's shrill scream.

Ah, fuck it.

I hate myself enough to die trying.

I take off my glasses. Put them on my shirt pocket and like some infantile hero with something to prove, I ran to the door.

 _Locked._ It was a push door. That meant I could kick it open. Aiming near the lock and just left of the door knob, I kick the door.

It splinters but holds.

Damn thing is sturdy. I kick it again. I made it crack loudly. The thing still holds.

On my third try, I kick it with everything I had in me. I think I could have pulled something but I don't feel it. It splinters, cracks, then finally it opens.

I glanced around the living room, Tsurumi isn't here.

A rustling and a cry comes from the other side of the house.

"Idiot." I tell myself. "Just follow the blood trail." With only my wits and a shaky confidence in my martial arts, I follow the trail of blood to the kitchen.

That's where I found them. Joined together.

What awaited me was crazed monster and a damsel. At least that's what my pop-cultured mind perceived.

Tsurumi stood in the kitchen, hiding behind his daughter, clutching her like she was his prey. Pressing a knife against her throat, pinning her to him. Keeping me away.

He looked straight out of a monster movie, a misshapen creature who bathes in blood. Mental sickness making him to commit acts of murder and a combination of lust and incestuous impulses compelling him to do worse to his own daughter.

I stood still and looked at her. Just to see what could make such a monster.

She was pale in an almost unhealthy kind of way, probably from spending too much time indoors like a shut-in. I noticed she's got the black hair like most of the girls, hers just seems less maintained, just naturally _as-is_ with no hidden features or special care necessary.

 _Maybe that's because it's disheveled from her dad holding her hostage, you idiot._ I told myself.

She has a cute face with gentle almost fragile features, contorted in a look of pure shock and horror as her mother's blood is spread on her.

And her eyes…

They're so blue. Like sapphires. Big, blue, sapphires with a leak, tears of panic and confusion flowing freely from them and going down to her cheeks.

I just stood there and said the first thing that came to mind. I raised my hands to get his attention and show I was unarmed and said, very clearly.

"Hey, pedophile!"

It wasn't a good plan. More like a sudden, desperate attempt to put Tsurumi's attention on me and not his daughter's throat.

It sort of worked, Tsurumi stopped whispering insanity into his daughter's ear and looked at me.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you. The _pedophile_ pinning his own daughter against his ragging erection."

Oh, God. What am I doing?

Tsurumi's eyes went to me, I had his full attention now. He looked like he wanted to melt me with his stare, make me combust into flames or something.

I know I did when I got pissed off by a know-it-all.

Yukinoshita really pissed me off the other day, after feeling humiliated I came to the realization that _anyone_ would be pissed by that.

Who wouldn't be pissed by someone you've never met talk down to you, tell your whole life story like she was reading a grocery list. Reveal every thought and action you've ever had. Dissecting it for the world to see.

And, right now. My taunting is working.

I know the basics of hostage negotiations. And this wasn't going to end well. His motives were clear as a dying man's browser history.

He wants to die together with his wife and daughter. I knew it. It had to be it. I can't afford to doubt myself right now.

For whatever reason, he wants all three of them to die right here, right now.

That's what he wants and I can't allow that.

But I can get him to point that knife at me and not pressed against his daughter's jugular. Talk him down, not calm him down. Get him so angry he might just let go of his daughter and attack me where my raised hands can catch his attack.

I just needed to get him angry enough to lunge at me. Make him hate me more than anyone in his entire life.

This must be the stupidest plan ever but I know for a fact that people have hated me before and I wasn't even trying, so this should be easy.

Play by your strengths, right?

But I'm not an idiot. School yard taunts won't elicit that much rage. No, I need to say something else, something personal.

Yukinoshita's smug face came to mind.

I've profiled this guy for days, I had to explore every dark thought he had and what lead to them, what Freudian excuses and insecurities that could lead you to killing and eating eight teenage girls.

"Your daughter doesn't belong to you, Tsurumi."

Tsurumi looks up. He craned his neck and suddenly, his eyes were right on me.

 _Are these the eyes of killer?_ I wondered. _Were they the last things those eight girls saw?_

I don't care. I found the button to press. So I keep pressing until something happens.

"I know what you are." I told him. I'm bluffing of course but it's a well-known fact people don't like to be told who they are.

"I see you for what you are, Tsurumi." I felt both pairs of eyes on me, one wanted help, and the other was a morbid fascination.

I'm a profiler. I see details and make a story, a portrait of who I'm profiling. When I've caught you, I won't be surprised of who I see, for I've already figured you out.

Tsurumi was an unfinished piece.

Very rarely do I get the opportunity confront my profile before I've even finished.

I hold my gaze on the former, eliciting a violent response from the latter.

And now I've got the last piece. I needed.

"She's not yours, Tsurumi."

The look of shock told me everything I needed to know. Tsurumi's mouth opened partly, like a jet of cold realization suddenly went through him.

I found it.

The answer.

"She'll find someone else to love, old man." I told him.

Tsurumi begins shaking his head, I've snapped him out of his little homicidal trance.

"I'll put you away for life, you know that right?"

Tsurumi grips his daughter tighter.

I retain eye contact.

"She'll get over you, eventually after years of therapy. She'll get over what you've done to her and she'll find some boy…"

He's a father. An overprotective, overbearing, incestuous piece of shit. And what he hates most in the world…

"Who knows, after I arrest you, she might fall in love with me."

…is competition.

A scream was the only warning I got before he slits his daughter's throat.

Have you ever seen a throat get slit? It's the same as putting mascara on a cat.

Putting mascara on a cat and pulling off a nice slick assassin-style throat slit are roughly the same, both the cat and the person would have to stay perfectly still and relaxed while the action should be one fluid motion.

But cats move, allot. They'll never hold still long enough for something as alarming as mascara. Even the slightest action causes them to overreact and jump away making applying any make-up on those angry creatures extremely difficult.

People are the same, they won't hold still, not when there's a knife pressed against their throat. They struggle and move around making it hard for a knife to smoothly travel for that dramatic, blood spraying shot.

That's why soldiers just opt to stab the throat.

His daughter's throat didn't turn into a gushing spray of red like in the gore movies.

No, she struggled and moved, not giving the knife the one straight line, somehow the knife got stuck somewhere in her tense neck muscles. Tsurumi had to physically pull her off to get the knife out of her.

That's when the red started coming out. Slowly, like a small leak that starts to grow. She starts covering her neck, tiny hands trying to stop the bleeding.

No gurgling sounds. That's good. It means the wound wasn't deep enough and she's not choking on her own blood. She might just make it.

I might not, though.

Tsurumi's eyes looked right at me, the look of a man who's lost everything by his own hands. Who dug his and everyone he loves' grave.

I see the abyss in those eyes. The alluring, bottomless terror men could fall in.

I had enough time to stare back at them to know he blames me for everything.

Then he came at me.

He's angry. Frantic. A wild animal cornered. His sanity is a rubber band stretched to the limit and finally snapped.

All he is now is the stored potential energy put into sudden motion. Like a whip.

He slashes at me frantically, judging from his angle he's aiming for my neck and missing by a mile.

I follow my training and keep my distance, pulling my body back every time he swings. Hoping for an opening to plant my foot and pivot as he over lunges.

He's untrained but he knows what he's doing. The way he holds his knife speaks for itself. His misses start getting closer to target. I have to stop him now before he can finalize on his adjustments.

He stabs at me, I counter. I pivot and grab his wrist, keeping control of his weapon-hand.

 _I've been trained by the best, sparred with people who are better, and fought worse odds than this._

Tsurumi yells and knees me. Missing my crotch but hitting my hips.

 _But that was a long time ago…_

I lose my grip on his hand. I let out a grunt of pain.

My hip feels numb all of a sudden. My knees buckle.

I haven't had a fight in years. Not since brawling in the dog fighting den have I had a real fight with something on two legs. The rust shows. Painfully.

He keeps coming at me with the knife. My timing is off, I can't grab the knife without injuring myself. I keep my distance, that's all I can do. Back then I could have disarmed him by now.

His swings are wide and sloppy. But I'm slow and rusty.

He screams again.

I back step from his incoming slash.

But I dodged to short this time. Something tugged at my pants and held me in place as Mr. Tsurumi's blade met the distance.

I got cut in the gut. Right below my belly button.

It doesn't hurt. I must be tougher than I thought.

Then I felt it.

At first it felt like getting pinched really hard, then it became pins and needles on my fresh wound. Sending waves of pain to my head and ears that I could almost hear it.

My hand goes to it first, for every second exposed to the air it stings like iodine, like the breeze had lemon in it. Putting pressure on it helps too.

It's wet, a hot moisture that can only be blood. My blood. Thick rich red pouring right out of me.

Thank god it wasn't overflowing. A millimeter deeper I'd be holding back a fountain. An inch, and I'd be holding my guts.

It hurts but I'll live.

Then it came. A white light that replaces my vision. The sudden excruciating feeling of your flesh being cut finally hits in full force.

I stumble back some more. And I realized my pants loop was stuck in a drawer handle.

 _Of all the times…_

The drawer couldn't pin me in place forever, I stumble back, my feet disappearing from the waist down right when I needed them the most.

The drawer comes out and falls, its contents coming down and making a mess on the floor.

Kitchen utensils clattering as like ugly chimes as they fell.

Kitchen utensils between me and a serial killer with a knife.

Oh, God, please let him trip on a spatula or something.

Tsurumi doesn't care, he just jumps over them and pushes me down as he lands.

My legs were already giving up on me, he didn't need to jump and put all eighty kilograms of his weight on me to make me fall.

From noodles to paper, I fall.

Pinned down.

An arm pushing down on my throat.

Tsurumi raises his knife high, wanting to stab my eye out.

A weapon. I need a weapon!

My hands are still free. I just need something that could hurt enough when I jam it into his neck.

In my panicked state, I pulled out the glasses that were still in my pocket.

Remembering my very first self-defense class, I held them in a reverse-grip and brought one end into the middle of his throat. Imaging my glasses going through his neck.

It didn't go through.

But it sure as hell must've stung for Tsurumi to wince in pain and clutch his neck like I shot a dart right through his larynx. His spit flying freely as his mouth opened in shock as if he were choking.

 _I must've hit him mid swallow._

Never has the sound of someone choking brought so much relief to me.

I seize the moment. Punching him off me. He falls to my left side, in a prone position. I throw away my glasses and reach for a sharp utensil I could use. My blind searching finds something heavy with a wooden handle.

A knife?

My hand closes around the handle and found it's too heavy to be a knife. Damn.

It's a cleaver.

The cleaver was in my hand and that was everything I could register.

I let out of scream of my own, directly from my gut, giving me the power to make this work, to stay alive, I screamed and gripped the cleaver's handle tightly as I swing.

I bury the cleaver into Mr. Tsurumi's head, splitting it open. Blood sips through his skull, flowing freely into his face, his eyes looking at me in shock right before the blood covers them.

For a moment, everything's frozen in place then I saw him twitch, he must be still alive so it's not over yet.

Pulling out the cleaver was hard, I buried it too deep into his skull. I had to push against him to finally pry the cleaver out of him.

Then I buried it into him again, this time I hit something mushy- soft. It made a sound I've only heard in a meat processing factory.

But I don't stop there.

I keep at it, the repetitive strikes make the action easier, like clockwork.

The map of those girls flashes in my mind. All their deaths, all the loved ones grieving. He caused it all! And that just made me swing harder. Angrier.

I scream again. Something primal came out of me.

Eventually, I found a rhythm as I hack away.

The impacts send tremors into my arm, almost numbing it.

I keep hacking, and I don't stop. I just keep hacking his brain wide open.

Because isn't that what I do? Get into criminal's heads?

I only stop when the cleaver hits something hard and it gets stuck, this time I can't pull it out. I've chopped all the way to his mouth. I could practically see the blade's edge come out of Mr. Tsurumi's mouth, right between his two front teeth.

There was no time for me to react to what I just did.

Crawling, I came to the daughter's side. I could see the life in her eyes. She's hanging on but the blood was still flowing.

I put my hand over the red gash on her neck, trying to remember all those first aid lessons.

"It's okay…It's okay….It's okay…" I mantra as I put pressure on the wound. This is beginning to feel oddly familiar. Her head moves to the side, eyes following to where her father lay. I think she may have tried to scream but blood must've clogged her throat.

She struggles against me, causing her to bleed more and more, her skin growing paler, like she's fading out of existence.

 _No._

I put more pressure on the wound, still unsure of what I'm doing. All I do is pin her in place to keep her from moving too much.

But once again, it was me against a faucet. But this one seems to be going on empty. Her movements quickly die down, growing limp.

"Hey!" I call out to her, getting no physical response. "Stay with me. Hey!" In desperation, I tried slapping her awake.

Then I see movement out of the corner of my eye and see her standing there. Dr. Yukinoshita was in entrance of the kitchen, watching me. For god knows how long, she's been watching me!

My heart fell out as I realize what I must look like. A man covered in blood on top of a teenage girl bleeding to death.

Oh, God! I must look like a bloodsucking demon to her.

Self-consciously, try to hide my eyes with my glasses. A sad habit I've developed from all the ridicule my eyes have brought me.

But I forgot I threw away my glasses during the fight. And instead of thick, plastic frames, my bloody hand just smears more blood on my face.

I'm just making this worst. Fuck.

"Here Hachiman."

I feel the familiar plastic stems sliding to my temple to the top of my ears, I look up to see blue eyes looking at me through my glasses.

Yukinoshita's blue eyes.

They say eyes are windows to the soul. I didn't see a soul. Just the color of calming blue. The promise of clear skies and free open spaces. I don't know how long I looked right at them, normally I would have averted my gaze. But I couldn't stop looking.

 _I could get lost in her eyes._

"Hello, Dr, Yukinoshita." I don't- I don't know why I said that. Is it the blood loss talking? I've never lost this much blood before.

As if she's rehearsed it, she responds. "Hello, Hachiman." she said with the same casual sophistication and courtesy I can't help but admire.

Yukinoshita takes my hands off the girl's neck, inspects the wound for a few seconds, and then puts her two fingers into the wound, blocking off the circulation with her slender digits. With her other hand, she stops the blood flow by holding the girl's neck like she was choking her from behind.

"I've already called an ambulance." Yukinoshita told me softly while keeping the girl alive with just her petite hands.

I relaxed a little and sat on the floor, leaning on the kitchen counter and just watched her **.**

No longer was she standing over me with pride, but on her knees helping someone, getting her perfectly manicured nails, perfectly washed hands, and perfectly laundered suit dirty trying to save a young girl's life.

I couldn't look away at what I was seeing. I was actually admiring the sight of Yukinoshita instead of the morbid fascination I have with other people's actions.

I watched her like that until the sirens began to grow close and the paramedics came rushing in. Yukinoshita explained to them in the way only a medical professional could, the paramedics nodded, knowing a doctor when they hear one barking orders.

My mind drifted to Yukinoshita's voice like that one sad mellow song you play before drifting off to sleep, I didn't focus on it.

I blinked for a really long time and suddenly found myself outside and strapped to a stretcher, sitting upright.

I watched as paramedics carry the girl to an awaiting ambulance, Yukinoshita followed them, holding the girl's hand as the paramedics haul her into the medical transport vehicle.

I rode with the other ambulance on the way to the next hospital, keeping the same blank expression I didn't bother to change.

When I got to the E.R. the first thing I did was ask about the Tsumrumi girl. None of the nurses gave me a straight answer. It was only when I saw Iroha that I got some answers. I had to be slightly physical with a few scrubs to get me to talk to her.

"She's stable." Was all she said, and it was enough. I relaxed and let the nurses and doctors have their way with me, thinking of Chiba as they drugged me up, put me in a room, and stitched me back together again.

I tried very hard not to make a Professor Stein joke.

The doctor said I'd be good to go in a few days. She told me to take it easy and I can stay overnight if the meds they gave me were too strong. I told her I'd be walk off the anesthetic and blood loss all the way to Miss Tsurumi's room.

In ICU room 201, I found the young girl elaborately woven in wires of life saving technology, a fly wrapped in a robot-spider's techno web. The machines the wires were attached to gave a low rumble while her heart monitor beeped every second-and-a-half, a hypnotic rhythm that drew me in a trance as watched her at peace.

It's an awful sight, but I felt relieved.

And so very, very guilty.

On her bed side, sleeping on a chair was Dr. Yukinoshita, her hand still holding on to the girl's tenderly, having never let go. Giving the young girl some tiny bit of comfort.

It was a sight that warmed my desensitized heart.

I couldn't help but stare at the sight of Yukinoshita, the abrasive psychiatrist looks cute when she's asleep.

Sorry. Creepy, I know, but I can't help but notice how she looks completely different when she's asleep. The lines on her face look softer, gentler even. People did say a resting bitch face requires effort, perhaps being at ease lowers the tension her perpetual better-than-you expression has on her face has.

How Yukinoshita could sleep next to that much intensive care I'd have to learn myself if I want to stay with them. Without thinking, I put my flak jacket over Yukinoshita's shoulders, the least I could give her if she wanted to sleep here. A small comfort I wanted to give forward. A rich girl like her would probably have a spoiled constitution and hospitals can get very cold at night.

Sitting down on the vacant chair I tried not thinking about today, but it's considered a bad habit for your mental health to go into denial so I did what all detectives should do and review the case in my head.

I woke up to home cooked breakfast courtesy of Yukinoshita, went on a paper run with her, coincidentally found the murderer Tatsumi Tsurumi and arrived in his house just in time for him to find him about to murder his whole family. And then I…had an altercation with him which ended badly.

It could be the drugs or the pain talking but something doesn't feel right.

I looked at Tsurumi's daughter, her file said her name's Rumi. She was the special girl. The one her father couldn't kill and that made him turn to killing other girls instead.

Wrapping up the case into a nice little package. But that doesn't mean there weren't any loose ends.

Why did Tatsumi try to kill her and his wife? What could have set him off? And how did I arrive just on time? Could it all just be coincidence?

No, simple answer is there's no such thing. Coincidence means I was on the right trail but got hit by a cheap shot before I could notice.

Something in my gut tells me that there's more to this. Something I'm not seeing, an angle to this whole thing I can't picture yet.

After about an hour of deep thought, I stepped outside for a bit and walked over to a vending machine to clear my thoughts. No Max Coffee, just the healthy kind that has ZERO percent of everything that made coffee good and comes inside a recyclable cup instead of a can.

I bought the cheapest one there, and took a sip of the iced _not_ Max Coffee.

"Hikki."

I stop drinking, pushing the coffee down my throat just to avoid spitting it out.

There's only one person in the world that calls me by that.

"Yui." I say her name like it forever haunts me. Maybe it does and I'm just starting to get over it.

Looking at her made me realize how much I've missed her. Her light orange hair looks longer now, already past her shoulder, in a loose side bun that looks just about to unravel. She wore blue jeans that's a size too large on her but she can still make it look great the only way her natural beauty can. A modest pink sweater left her upper half to the imagination to hide the bountiful flesh she's so shy about.

My training kicks in and I figure out why she's wearing that, they're easy to put on. I imagine she got a call from home and rushed to the hospital.

"What are you doing here?" I asked and then she frowned.

That came out wrong, but no matter how I could have said it, it _will_ sound wrong.

"That's rude!" she said a few octaves to high, even in a hospital, she doesn't care about being too loud. "I'm still your emergency contact, you know?!" she reminded.

"Sorry." I wave off, going into the motions we've both rehearsed and practiced long ago.

Then the implications dawned on me "That's right." I spoke slowly. I'm an idiot for forgetting to change it. Now she must think I kept it that way on purpose, that I'm still pining over her. Hell, I probably faked my injuries so she'd have to come visit me, like the sad, lonely, loser she thinks I am without her.

But I'm not doing her justice. Yui's not that kind of person, she deserves so much more than what I think of her. So I'll try again, better this time.

Meet Yui Yuigahama. Dog lover. Pre-school teacher. And the former _Mrs. Hikigaya_.

I looked at her hands and tried to smile. "That's a much nicer ring than the one I got you."

Or at least… there was a time I wanted her to be.

End of Chapter

 **AN: I'm back and I've decided to update my stories as my 2019 New Year's resolution.**


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